04 Apr 2024
Through greater levels of devolution, combined authority mayors and the Mayor of London have increasing powers, resources and influence to take ambitious action on tackling the climate crisis and restoring nature. These powers and resources vary from region to region but are likely to include spending powers, for example on transport and adult education, as well as duties to develop and deliver key local strategies, for example on energy and nature.
In the run-up to the elections this May, we have an opportunity to scrutinise mayoral candidates’ plans for climate and nature and to secure greater ambition from them through various campaigning tactics and our mayoral pledge.
What are the mayoral elections?
On 2 May 2024, elections for combined authority mayors will be held in the following 9 regions across England:
- East Midlands
- Greater Manchester
- Liverpool City Region
- North East England
- South Yorkshire
- Tees Valley
- West Midlands
- West Yorkshire
- York and North Yorkshire
An election will also be taking place for the Mayor of London. These 10 mayors are directly elected leaders and can have significant powers within an area.
Find out more about how these mayors came about, why they’re important and how they can act on climate and nature.
How to campaign for climate action
Ahead of the May elections, we want to secure ambitious commitments from the mayoral candidates in our areas. By campaigning for candidates to take our mayoral pledge, they can sign up to taking climate and nature action. The pledge also allows us to hold our decision makers to account after the election and ensure they follow through on their commitments.
Below are various ways your group can campaign for climate action.
Work with others
It’s great when we work together towards shared goals and ambitions. By building broad and diverse partnerships in our local areas, we can have much more impact.
You can work with partners to plan and deliver your mayoral elections campaign, meet candidates alongside your partners, and jointly host hustings events. They may also be able to share your resources and events with their networks to attract more people to participate in the campaign.
Think about how you’re going to work collaboratively with your local partners beyond the election as well. How can you work together to hold the new Mayor to account and ensure they deliver on their commitments?
Find out more about building partnerships.
Share our Climate Action Plans
We’ve produced a Climate Action Plan for each of the 10 regions where mayoral elections will take place in May.
These set out our key priorities across issues such as transport, energy, housing, nature and green jobs. As well as these priorities, the Climate Action Plans are jam-packed with local data and information to support your call for action.
Share your Climate Action Plan with your mayoral candidates to set out your expectations of what they need to achieve.
You can also share it with potential partners so that they can see what bold action on climate and nature looks like.
Read and download the Climate Action Plan for your area.
Secure bold climate commitments
We’ve launched a pledge to enable candidates to make clear their ambitions for climate and nature. Together, we can ensure our leaders are committed to safeguarding our planet for future generations.
Ask your candidates to sign the pledge as early as possible so that they can commit to action. This will help you to centre your election campaign around key issues as well as lay the foundation for further engagement via meetings and hustings.
Once a candidate agrees to sign the pledge, ask them to confirm this by completing the pledge form, or you can complete it on the candidate's behalf with their permission. It's useful to have proof that they've agreed if you complete the form yourself.
Celebrate when a candidate signs the pledge with social media posts using the hashtag #ClimateMayors2024 and with press releases. Use that candidate signing up to put pressure on others to pledge as well.
Post-election, we can use these pledges to hold winning candidates to account, ensuring they remain true to their commitment to climate and nature action.
Meet your candidates
Meeting with candidates is a good way to understand their priorities and identify how committed they are to acting on the climate and ecological emergency. Arranging for your group and other local allies to meet with candidates is also a good way to show your collective power.
Meetings are a great opportunity to discuss the Climate Action Plan in more detail. You should also ask candidates to sign the pledge if they haven’t yet done so and to take part in hustings. If you secure their support for the pledge in the meeting, you can complete the pledge form on their behalf (but try to get evidence of them agreeing to this).
It’s important to have candidates show visual support. Ask them to hold up a printable A3 pledge poster, and you can also hold up your own campaign poster too. This will make for a great photo opportunity, which you can then share on social media and with local media to get the word out about your campaign.
Once you have a candidate’s support, make sure you share their commitment via social media. Read our guide to meeting with your election candidates for more information.
Organise a hustings
A hustings is a great opportunity in the run-up to an election to enable voters to question candidates and hear more about their plans to deliver on climate and nature. They're an effective way to publicly push candidates to make commitments on taking climate and nature action.
It’s a good idea to work with your local partners to hold hustings. By working together, you’ll have more chance of securing commitments from candidates.
Read our guide on how to organise and host a hustings.
Get the word out
The more people that hear about your campaign the better. Spreading the word can help recruit new people to your group and show electoral candidates how much support there is for climate and nature action in your area.
Action Network is a really powerful tool for engaging people to take action online to lobby candidates, attend hustings and maintain the pressure on candidates beyond the election. If you’re not already on Action Network, please contact [email protected] and we can set you up.
If you’re working with local partners, make sure you’re sharing your campaign news, including hustings events, across all your networks.
The 2024 mayoral elections are likely to be high-profile political events, so you should make sure the local and regional media are aware of your campaign.
Find out more about how you can use social media to campaign, get local media coverage to spread the word, and download our election-specific social media templates.
