Climate Emergency Manchester today releases a new briefing note on the 2022 update of the Manchester Climate Change Framework – the plan for the bringing down the city’s emissions – which will be discussed at the Environment and Climate Change Scrutiny Committee on Thursday.
At a meeting taking place amid record heat temperatures, councillors are not likely to feel comfortable. Just three years after declaring a climate emergency, the updated framework provides them with more detail but little reassurance. It admits that the city is way off track but has no contingency plan for continued failure and the blowing of the carbon budget. It even includes proposals which will take us still further off track. There is no sense of who is accountable and who follows up on actions. Partnership working is stuck at engagement rather than delivery. Yes, much work has gone into this update, but it reads like a document from a parallel, cooler universe.
CEM’s briefing note asks:
- Why is the carbon budget so far off track?
- Why are there proposals to go further off track?
- What happens if we continue to fail and the carbon budget is abandoned?
- Who is accountable in the Manchester Climate Change Agency and Partnership?
The briefing note makes five recommendations:
- A report to ECCSC on why the city’s emissions have not been sufficiently reduced over the past three years, with a focus on lessons learned
- An acknowledgement by ECCSC of the importance of following scenarios which do not store up bigger problems for the second half of this decade
- A contingency plan for failure if / when the carbon budget is blown
- A revised framework making clear the lines of accountability within the Climate Change Agency and Partnership
- A strategy for delivering on actions by Partnership members, including delivery between different sectors (e.g. a partnership between housing providers, retrofit specialists and energy companies to deliver warmth and cool).
You can read the briefing note here
You can watch the meeting (online, in a cool place) here
And get in touch with us at contact@climateemergencymanhester.net or @ClimateEmergMcr
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