‘Manchester leads the way’ is a phrase frequently heard in the Town Hall. We’re not so sure. We suspect that no one city has all the answers to the climate emergency. Rather, there may be good initiatives scattered across the country. Some councils may be ahead on one area, desperately behind on another. This CEM Core Cities project aims to compare responses to the climate emergency across the UK, to encourage both councils and campaigns to learn from each other.
The Core Cities group is a self-selected and self-financed advocacy group consisting of 11 UK cities outside Greater London. These are:
- Belfast
- Brimingham
- Bristol
- Cardiff
- Glasgow
- Leeds
- Liverpool
- Manchester
- Newcastle
- Nottingham
- Sheffield
Core Cities members do look to each other, sometimes in a spirit of cooperation and sometimes as rivals. They share certain features, and all have declared a climate emergency.
We undertook a first comparison of seven of the Core Cities in July 2020. In the autumn, we hope to role out the analysis to all the Core Cities, dig deeper into the data and also assess just how ‘green’ the recovery plan of the various Councils look set to be.
For Core Cities v2. we are ooking for research volunteers, ideally based in one of the cities above to collect information about climate action undertaken by the respective council.
You will need to be able to spare between 4 and 6 hours before the end of October 2020. The final report will appear in November 2020.
In terms of skills you need, or could gain:
1 Advanced keyword search skills
2 Ability to navigate and locate key information in council and local authority documents
3 How to compile short reports
Absolutely no prior knowledge is essential for this volunteer task, although we would welcome anyone with experience of advising or engaging with local authorities on their climate action plan
For those looking to gain knowledge, we anticipate that you would learn:
- More about how local council works, particularly around climate change policy
- The role of cities in planning and policymaking
- Lots of ideas for local initiatives that respond to the climate emergency
Contact us via: contact@climateemergencymanchester.net
Standard disclaimer:
CEM doesn’t do open-ended commitments or emotional blackmail – you can take on one job without us wrapping ourselves around you like a peckish anaconda
We will try to match jobs to the amount of time, skill, motivation you have.
If something comes up, and you can’t do what you said, please tell us!