As pressure builds within councils to tackle climate change, it is becoming clear that many leaders don’t have the skills to promote such an uncharted agenda. SOLACE Enterprises aims to change the status quo, as Petra Barnby reports
The Climate Change Act sets an ambitious 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.
The scale of the challenge means it can no longer be left to environment officers to make the required alterations.
Leadership must come from the top, and make its way into the remit of every member of staff, if councils are to realistically achieve their targets.
Director of SOLACE Enterprises, Martin Horton, explains: ‘Tackling climate change will be the defining challenge for local authorities from now onwards. There are still councils out there led by climate change sceptics.
‘It is the role of leaders to action change and it calls for a kind of leadership we haven’t had before.’
He adds: ‘The focus, for too long, has been on financial innovation, which is what has got us into the mess we are in now. There is now no excuse for not taking action.
‘Germany has been doing this for 15 years.’
Some of the harder questions council chief executives need to be able to answer now are;
l why is it important for councils to reduce their CO2?
l what is climate change and why is it so important?
l what is the Climate Change Act?
l how will you persuade people to take action against climate change within your organisation?
One of the biggest challenges in all this is the need to change people’s behaviour, inside and outside the council. That is why top-down leadership is so important.
Warren Hatter, a local improvement adviser for the IDeA, says: ‘Climate change tends to get delegated to people who don’t have much of a voice in the corporate decisions of the council.
‘Councils do not have a great deal of history in dealing with behaviour change.’
So, how can chief executives drive this behaviour change? Before setting out, they need to do following:
l create a soundbite which captures your personal message on climate change
l set an example – driving an 8-litre car and waxing lyrical about the need to reduce CO2 emissions is not a good look
l establish your galvanising factor – will you go down the scaremonger route or will you come at it from a positive, healthier-environment angle?
l use buzzwords which will capture people’s attention/imagination
l provide incentives to action where you can
l set the climate change problem in context – if you want to save two tons of CO2, how can people visualise that?
l do you really care about tackling climate change in your council? If not, why not?
l how will you persuade members?
l if you don’t go make CO2 reduction a priority now, will you lose value and credibility as a professional?
Once all of the above have been considered, leaders need to make sure that behaviour within the council is changed. Carbon reduction must be fed into every policy area – it must even be included in the contract of every member of staff.
And, instead of thinking about decisions in terms of money, staff need to begin thinking in terms of the associated carbon cost too.
Birmingham City Council has prepared its climate change response at a city-wide level, through its local strategic partnership – BeBirmingham. It aims to reduce the city’s carbon emissions by 60% by 2026.
Deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, Cllr Paul Tilsley, is the portfolio-holder for climate change and sustainability.
He says: ‘It is the role of leaders in each sector to identify what matters, marshal the resources to make a difference, and then drive forward action for change.’
To find out more about SOLACE’s ‘Future leaders, future contexts’ course, visit www.solaceenterprises.com.
The scale of the challenge means it can no longer be left to environment officers to make the required alterations.
Leadership must come from the top, and make its way into the remit of every member of staff, if councils are to realistically achieve their targets.
Director of SOLACE Enterprises, Martin Horton, explains: ‘Tackling climate change will be the defining challenge for local authorities from now onwards. There are still councils out there led by climate change sceptics.
‘It is the role of leaders to action change and it calls for a kind of leadership we haven’t had before.’
He adds: ‘The focus, for too long, has been on financial innovation, which is what has got us into the mess we are in now. There is now no excuse for not taking action.
‘Germany has been doing this for 15 years.’
Some of the harder questions council chief executives need to be able to answer now are;
l why is it important for councils to reduce their CO2?
l what is climate change and why is it so important?
l what is the Climate Change Act?
l how will you persuade people to take action against climate change within your organisation?
One of the biggest challenges in all this is the need to change people’s behaviour, inside and outside the council. That is why top-down leadership is so important.
Warren Hatter, a local improvement adviser for the IDeA, says: ‘Climate change tends to get delegated to people who don’t have much of a voice in the corporate decisions of the council.
‘Councils do not have a great deal of history in dealing with behaviour change.’
So, how can chief executives drive this behaviour change? Before setting out, they need to do following:
l create a soundbite which captures your personal message on climate change
l set an example – driving an 8-litre car and waxing lyrical about the need to reduce CO2 emissions is not a good look
l establish your galvanising factor – will you go down the scaremonger route or will you come at it from a positive, healthier-environment angle?
l use buzzwords which will capture people’s attention/imagination
l provide incentives to action where you can
l set the climate change problem in context – if you want to save two tons of CO2, how can people visualise that?
l do you really care about tackling climate change in your council? If not, why not?
l how will you persuade members?
l if you don’t go make CO2 reduction a priority now, will you lose value and credibility as a professional?
Once all of the above have been considered, leaders need to make sure that behaviour within the council is changed. Carbon reduction must be fed into every policy area – it must even be included in the contract of every member of staff.
And, instead of thinking about decisions in terms of money, staff need to begin thinking in terms of the associated carbon cost too.
Birmingham City Council has prepared its climate change response at a city-wide level, through its local strategic partnership – BeBirmingham. It aims to reduce the city’s carbon emissions by 60% by 2026.
Deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, Cllr Paul Tilsley, is the portfolio-holder for climate change and sustainability.
He says: ‘It is the role of leaders in each sector to identify what matters, marshal the resources to make a difference, and then drive forward action for change.’
To find out more about SOLACE’s ‘Future leaders, future contexts’ course, visit www.solaceenterprises.com.
