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GM Mayoral Elections – Your Candidates’ Views on Environmental Issues

On 4th May 2017, Greater Manchester goes to the polls to elect the first Mayor for the whole of the conurbation.

Manchester Friends of the Earth asked all candidates to respond to a set of questions on environmental and social issues. To help you make up your mind about where to cast your vote for a sustainable and socially just Greater Manchester, you can see links to their responses and the questions we asked below.

Candidate Responses

Select candidates below to see their response.

Questions to Candidates

Ask 1: Urgently clean up the air in Greater Manchester – bringing it within EU legal limits and making it safe for us to breathe. Start by announcing a ban on diesel vehicles in Greater Manchester by 2025.
Greater Manchester’s filthy air is responsible for around 2,000 early deaths each year, and affects the health of thousands more. Urgent action is needed to reduce deadly nitrogen dioxide emissions, the majority of which come from diesel vehicles. A growing number of city leaders across the world have introduced restrictions on the most polluting vehicles. The new mayor should join them by announcing a ban on all diesel vehicles in Greater Manchester by 2025.

Ask 2: Take action to reduce the impact of congestion on human health, the economy and the environment. Start by introducing a workplace parking levy for large and medium-sized businesses in Greater Manchester.
Congestion is a growing economic and environmental problem for our region. In 2012, Nottingham City Council introduced a charge on employers who provide workplace parking – this raised over £25 million in its first three years of operation, all of which was spent on improving the city’s transport infrastructure. Collection rates stand at 100% with no penalty notices issued and the whole system is operated by a team of fewer than 10 members of staff. The new mayor should introduce a similar workplace parking levy for large and medium sized businesses in Greater Manchester.

Ask 3: Make active travel more accessible, and safe. Start by establishing a GM active travel fund of at least 20 pounds per person per year to provide consistent, long term investment in walking and cycling across Greater Manchester.
Walking and cycling are not only good for people’s health and the environment, they also help ease congestion and deliver social and economic benefits. The Bike Life Greater Manchester report highlighted that 80% of people wanted cycling to be safer and 75% wanted more investment in cycling. To meet the GM target of 10% of all journeys to be made by bicycle by 2025, the new mayor needs to ringfence funding to deliver a safe and protected cycle network that connects communities across the region, and to ensure that all residential and commercial buildings provide convenient and secure cycle storage.

Ask 4: Curb noise, air and climate change pollution from aviation. Start by calling for a cap on passenger numbers at Manchester Airport at current levels.
Air travel is a major source of air pollution and carbon emissions, and the planned doubling of passengers numbers and corresponding increase in flights at Manchester Airport will increase emissions in the Greater Manchester area at a time when there is both a moral and legal imperative to decrease them. In addition, noise pollution from flights already has a significant impact on people living beneath flight paths. If the new mayor is serious about tackling climate change, congestion, noise and air pollution, they must reign in the rapid increase in passenger numbers at Manchester Airport.

Ask 5: Protect green spaces in Greater Manchester and make them fit for the 21st century. Start by protecting and enhancing our green belt as a thriving home for nature and a place for people across Greater Manchester to enjoy.
Greater Manchester’s green belt is vital for protecting nature, and confining urban sprawl. The region needs new housing, but building on the green belt, far from jobs and services, is not a sustainable solution and will just encourage developers to ignore available brownfield sites. The new mayor must commit to protect and enhance the green belt, working with neighbouring local authorities to give people in Greater Manchester the chance to enjoy the benefits of high-quality green space.

Ask 6: Make existing homes fit for the 21st century. Start by funding an ambitious GM retrofit programme, supported by a new GM retrofit standard and a skills programme.
The new mayor must work hard to ensure good quality, warm homes for all, and to mitigate the mental and physical health impacts of cold and unsafe housing on Greater Manchester’s most vulnerable demographics – young children, infants, and the elderly. An ambitious retrofit programme will not only cut fuel bills and tackle fuel poverty, it will also reduce the impact of cold homes on people’s health and the healthcare budget, as well as creating jobs in every community.

Ask 7: Make new homes fit for the 21st century. Start by setting a GM standard to ensure new developments are zero carbon and climate resilient.
New homes built today may last for over 100 years, so it is vital that they are built to the highest energy efficiency standards if we are to meet our carbon reduction obligations and address fuel poverty. The new mayor must use their planning powers to ensure that all new housing developments in Greater Manchester are built to Zero Carbon Homes standards, and include on-site energy generation wherever possible.

Ask 8: Make rented homes fit for the 21st century. Start by introducing a landlord licensing scheme to drive up standards in the private rented sector.
Greater Manchester’s private rented sector has the highest proportion of the coldest homes. The new mayor must introduce a landlord licensing scheme and set a minimum standard of Energy Performance Certificate Band C by 2025. This will save lives and make a real difference to the heating bills and quality of life of tens of thousands of renters across the region.

Ask 9: Make Greater Manchester a world leader in tackling climate change. Start by setting science-based carbon budgets in line with the Paris Agreement goal to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees C.
In December 2015, world leaders signed a historic agreement in Paris to keep the rise in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees C and to aim for 1.5 degrees C. Now it’s time for Greater Manchester to step up our ambition and set science-based carbon budgets in line with this agreement. The new mayor must ensure the Greater Manchester Strategy commits the region to our fair share of action for a 1.5 degree world, and seizes the benefits of moving to a greener, more efficient economy.

Ask 10: Put Greater Manchester on a path to being powered by 100% clean energy by 2050. Start by committing to identify sites and provide support for community-owned energy projects in every borough.
Greater Manchester has huge potential for renewable energy, yet it currently lags behind the rest of the UK. Greater Manchester should commit to going 100% renewable by 2050, following the lead of the six GM local authorities which signed a clean energy pledge in November 2015. The new mayor should develop a plan to boost renewables at least tenfold over the next decade, and start by supporting the roll-out of municipal and community energy schemes – enabling installations of solar panels on schools, churches and suitable local authority roofs. In addition, the Mayor should deliver a publicly owned energy company for the Greater Manchester region.

Ask 11: Keep fossil fuels in the ground. Start by committing to no fracking in Greater Manchester, ever.
Fracking is a new source of fossil fuels, and cannot be part of the solution to climate change when the science says we must leave the vast majority of the world’s fossil fuel reserves unburnt. Everywhere that fracking is proposed, local communities reject it. It has no place in Greater Manchester, or anywhere in the UK. The next mayor must commit to keeping our region free from fracking and all other sources of unconventional fossil fuel extraction, such as coal bed methane and underground coal gasification.

Ask 12: Stop Greater Manchester funding climate-changing fossil fuels. Start by calling on the Greater Manchester Pension Fund to divest from fossil fuel companies.
The Greater Manchester Pension Fund has a combined pension pot of £15 billion, of which over £1 billion is invested in fossil fuels. Given most of the world’s remaining coal, oil and gas must remain unburnt to keep the climate safe, investment in fossil fuels is not only ethically and environmentally unsound, but is also a financial risk to pension holders. The new mayor should support divestment of all public sector pension funds from fossil fuels, starting with the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, and call on other organisations such as the universities and The Co-operative to follow suit.

 

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