Footsteps and Birmingham Faith Climate Action Partnership meeting with Lord Hunt, Minister of State at the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero.
Lord Hunt, who lives in Birmingham, had invited representatives from Footsteps and the Faith Climate Action Partnership to a meeting to share our experience of working with faith communities and how we will be sharing nationally through our partnership with Ashden charity.
Eight of us, including Matthew Ahluwalia, Ashden Charity and Tasawar Bashir, MECC Trust had an informal and constructive 45 minutes with the Minister who started by emphasising the importance of addressing climate change and outlining the work being done to move away from fossil fuel-based power, including the role for nuclear power.
The meeting then moved on to the importance of reducing energy use and the role of community-based schemes. Lord Hunt was particularly interested in work being done in Balsall Heath by MECC and Retrofit Balsall Heath. He also thought that the ‘urban renewal’ whole street approach to improving housing taken in the 1970’s and 80’s had been particularly effective.
We emphasised that the faiths had a long tradition of working together in Birmingham and how they had worked with the Council during the Covid pandemic and how, more recently, had been working behind the scenes avoid the rioting seen in other UK cities. Now with the climate and biodiversity crisis, we said faith communities ‘walk the talk’ and faith bodies needed to be recognised and involved by local and national government in creating new partnership, especially at community level.
Overall a very constructive and friendly exchange with the Minister and we hope to keep him updated as our partnership project develops.