An important report about economics and climate change is published today by Manchester City Council. It will be discussed by a committee of councillors at Manchester Town Hall next Wednesday, June 20th. We should be able to tell you roughly what is in it. We should be able to, but we can’t.

Why? Well, although the Economy Scrutiny committee accepted the offer made by eleven people (including one of Manchester Climate Monthly’s editors) to work collaboratively on the production of a report about Steady State economics, this hasn’t happened. Instead, the report is being produced, without collaboration, by Council officers.

A little background
The offer was made in November 2011. The minutes of the committee meeting at which the offer was accepted were published in December 2011, and a commitment made to contact the signatories of the letter. In January 2012 the email addresses of the signatories were offered to the Council.

In late May, an email was sent to some of the signatories, requesting the email addresses of the other signatories. These were supplied (by MCFly). An email then went out on a Tuesday afternoon, inviting signatories to attend a meeting that Thursday afternoon. Two of the eleven signatories were able to attend, and see a draft of the report. MCFly was not among those two.

Future blog posts about this report will be about what it does – and does not – say, and where it leads. By the time many people read this, the report will have been posted, and commentary written, and linked to from this post.

But it is important, right now, to remember the context; Manchester City Council was offered the free use of the expertise and enthusiasm of eleven people, including academics, business people and activists.  That would in turn have drawn in other people willing to offer their knowledge and skills, for free.  The Council had six months to work with those people to produce a ground-breaking piece of work.

In the end, it was willing (or able?) to call one meeting on 48 hours’ notice.

In the coming years and decades, local authorities are going to need to be able to work with civil society partners on these issues. We can but hope that lessons are learnt from this particular unfortunate sequence of events.

Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com

Further background
The November 2011 report came about because of testimony given in November 2010 by MCFly co-editor Marc Hudson (see contemporaneous reports here and here).  A report was promised, but was delayed (see here).  When the report was finally published in November 2011, its brevity was the inspiration for the offer by the 11 signatories of the open letter.