About Us

Background

On 17th December 2018 Machynlleth became the first town in Wales to declare a climate emergency. Machynlleth town council passed this historic motion following a petition with hundreds of signatures from local people in response to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) statement that governments had to take serious action within the next twelve (now eleven) years to prevent catastrophic changes in the climate. The town council agreed to launch a consultation to develop an action plan over the next 6 months to:

make Machynlleth net-zero carbon as soon as possible;
increase local resilience to climate impacts;
maximise local benefits of these actions in other sectors such as health, agriculture, transport and the economy;

It also agreed to:

Call on Wales and UK Government to provide the support and resources to make this possible;

Work with other local areas, particularly the community councils and other partners in the Dyfi Biosphere;

Report within six months with the actions the town can take to address this emergency, for example increasing the energy efficiency of the Plas, or working with the town’s purchasing policy;

Discuss with Renew Wales how they might support this process.

Summary of process so far

An open meeting in February led to the setting up of ten groups altogether:

1) a steering group to oversee the process,

2) an engagement group and the following topic groups

3) energy in buildings,

4) transport,

5) waste,

6) food,

7) biodiversity,

8) well-being,

9) planning & economic development,

10) energy supply

In the last 6 months (time of writing: July 2019) there have been a total of more than 50 working group meetings, and an engagement presence at some local events. In June 2019 students at CAT conducted a ‘systems analysis’ of the consultation process so far to advise us on emerging priorities for action, i.e. the ones that have most leverage in the local community are likely to have most impact on reducing carbon emissions and increase well-being. The resulting report is well worth reading and can be provided for anyone who would like to read it.

We have done very little on quantifying the impact of actions or setting specific targets.

We aimed to make the process as transparent, open and well advertised as possible but this has been a challenge. We have communicated by email with the people who signed the original petition and those who came to the public meeting.

Some groups (Waste and Energy in buildings) have attracted other people to specific public meetings but we have not managed to find a process that we could achieve easily that would mean that anyone in the community could see what was happening and how they could get involved.

There has been a lot of energy, enthusiasm, and work done in terms of forming groups, defining areas of interest, reaching out to stakeholders, and developing initial action plans.

July 2019 Action Report Executive summary

There is a strong awareness within the groups that action needs to be taken by government at every level as well as by individuals. The groups have indicated which things could happen locally at no cost (but probably using volunteer time) and which things that need done by local or national government. Many of them will improve people’s quality of life and build on the already strong sense of community. Some of them will save people money, some will create more local jobs and some will improve people’s health. Some will depend on us raising money to make them happen. The only significant areas that are within the control of the town council are the Plas itself and its grounds. Beyond that, the role of the town council is mainly to show leadership, to lend encouragement to community action and to lend weight to lobbying other levels of government.

On going challenges are the need to widen engagement within the community and prioritise and coordinate actions that will have the most impact at moving towards net zero carbon as quickly as possible. The Steering Group welcomes the Council’s suggestion to have regular joint meetings and would be pleased to hear the Council’s response to this report and ideas about how to take it forward.