Breathing it in: air quality event report
On Tuesday 8th September 2015 Manchester Friends of the Earth hosted an open meeting on the topic of Air Quality.
Background
Earlier in the year a few of our group members were involved with a Citizen Science project to monitor air quality levels in four locations within Greater Manchester.
In April/May we asked every local election candidate across Greater Manchester (that we could find) the following question. “Would you support tougher action to reduce air pollution in the Greater Manchester region?” This question achieved a 100% ‘Yes’ response across all political parties.
We know air quality is a big issue and some of us were keen to learn a lot more about it and to find out what we as an environmental campaigning group can do.
Presentations
To learn more we invited two speakers along:
Andrea Lee from the Healthy Air Campaign gave us an introduction to the issue and an overview about the legal aspects.
- Find out more about the Healthy Air Campaign
- Download Andrea’s presentation Breathing it in – Healthy Air Campaign Andrea Lee
- Watch the film that we attempted to show on the night about the healthiest transport options
Matthew O’Neill from Transport for Greater Manchester talked about the issues that face us at a local level and what they believe needs to be done.
- Download Matthew’s presentation Breathing it in – GM Low Emissions Strategy.pptx
Discussion
Following the presentations we split into small groups to discuss ideas of what we could do. Here are a few of the suggestions:
- Need to make the issue visible; because we can’t see air pollution many people don’t recognise the seriousness of it
- Engage with both local and national consultations
- Present the future vision; a world without air pollution
- Green the city; greener and more pleasant areas encourage people to walk and cycle more
- The need to consider locations of major roads when building new schools and nurseries (N.B. you can watch a film about this issue)
- Continue to raise awareness of the issue
Consultation
We were informed at the event that there will shortly be both local and national consultations on the issue:
- Transport for Greater Manchester have drafted a Greater Manchester Low Emissions Strategy that will be released for public consultation shortly after the publication of the national consultation.
- On Saturday 12 September, Defra announced the opening of the public consultation on the national air quality strategy.
Next steps
So how can we all get involved in learning more and campaigning on the issue?
- Check out the links above to find out more information
- Join in a project to monitor air quality in Greater Manchester with an I-phone
- We will shortly be hosting a follow up meeting to review the consultation and agree campaign plans to take forward