Careful and/or long-term readers of MCFly will know we’ve not been entirely uncritical of the “Stakeholder Steering Group.”  We reported on its reboot, wrote them an open letter with suggestions about how to pull their fingers out (they ignored it) and wrote a mildly critical report of the last “stakeholder” “conference.”

After this, we were even invited to attend the Steering Group to talk about MCFly and what (else) we do.  We said “yes, on the condition that the group justify its exclusion of members of the public from its meetings.”  The invitation was withdrawn. (We made an “Open Video” to them about this, to fulfil our promise to attend.)

More recently, we just decided that enough was enough, and once/if ever it started doing something then we might devote some very limited bandwidth to it (print edition only).  Well, recently there’s been a report produced about buildings and the (likely) missing of carbon reduction targets.  Now there’s this below what has landed in our inbox.

If any reader of MCFly ends up on the Steering Group, perhaps they’d like to raise the thorny questions of democracy and transparency. And speed; meeting the scale of this problem with the breadth, speed, force and nuance that we need to.

Volunteers needed to chair sub-groups

Manchester’s climate change action plan – Manchester: A Certain Future – is overseen by an independent steering group of volunteers who regularly meet to assess progress against the plan, gather evidence and engage with all of those people and organisations across the city who can help us hit our goal of reducing carbon emissions, creating a
low-carbon culture and making sure the city is well-adapted to future changes in our climate.

In 2013 the Steering Group is set to change the way it does business, by basing five out of its six annual meetings on a specific, thematic area of activity. To deliver each of these five annual reviews of progress, we’re going to establish five sub-groups to tackle that area in detail. The five groups we want to establish are:

Buildings
Energy
Transport
Green and Blue
Sustainable Production and Consumption

To lead those five groups, we’d like to recruit a new chairperson who, if they’re not already a member, will be co-opted onto our full M:ACF Steering Group. We’re looking for someone who has some background in each of the five areas we want to cover, who has experience of chairing groups of this sort and who, of course, is supportive of our
wider climate change plan for Manchester. We’d like to recruit all five chairs in the next few weeks and if possible, confirm their appointment at our next full Steering Group meeting in December.

So let us know if you’d like to play a part. Simply send a short statement of your commitment to Manchester’s climate change plan and a short CV or biography to Kate Morley at Groundwork Manchester:
kate.morley@groundwork.org.uk by the end of November.

Many thanks,

Steve Connor, Chair
MACF Steering Group
www.manchesterclimate.com
Linked In Group: Manchester: A Certain Future