Category Archives: Manchester

Big Issue North: Predict & Provide – Food Poverty In The UK

Posted on April 19, 2013 | 1 Comment

THE BIOSPHERIC PROJECT credit Robert MartinFrom horsemeat in burgers to poverty related hunger, food is in the headlines in the worst possible way. Yet as food prices continue to rise and cities grow, the shortage of affordable and healthy food looks set to worsen. So what can an old mill in Salford do to bring sustainable and wholesome fare to our cities? Arwa Aburawa investigates.

With central government examining the surge of emergency foodbanks and charities warning of an increase in poverty-related hunger, it’s clear food insecurity is on the rise. The horsemeat scandal may have raised a lot of questions about our supermarkets but more daunting questions are now being asked about how we protect the poorest from rising food prices. How can we make healthy food more accessible in the wake of the cuts? And can cities really feed themselves? Manchester International Festival and the Biospheric Foundation in Salford are working together to answer these very questions….

Read on below:

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Posted in Big Issue North, climate change, Environment, Food, Green, Manchester

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MCM: Awareness into action? Manchester BME groups talk climate change

Posted on March 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

A group of around 30, pretty diverse, people attended an event today hoping to raise awareness about the impact of climate change on BME communities in Manchester.

The event kicked off with an introduction by the chair of the Manchester BME Network Atiha Chaudry who also gave some of the partners a chance to talk about their Defra-funded research and findings. This included Michelle Ayavoro from Creative Hands and Kate Damiral from NCVO. I sadly missed this but arrived in time to sample some the workshops.

After listening into the ‘understanding the impact of climate change’ presentation I wandered into the community involvement workshop run by Catrina Pickering from Afsl. All attendees were given some handouts about projects in Manchester and were told to discuss them in pairs and share back to the group. I happened to walk in just as the group were enthusing about how great Manchester Climate Monthly was (my work here is done!) so I was pretty impressed. All the attendees got to talk about projects they wanted to share with others and also ask for help. Pretty cool stuff but I’m clearly biased.

Talking to various people during lunchtime, it’s clear that whilst they were happy that the awareness-raising event (funded by Defra as part of the research) was happening, they were wondering ‘what next?’. I sat down with Atiha Chaudry and asked her that very question. Here’s what she said:

The final report with all the findings and also the toolkit will be available next month.

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Posted in climate change, Climate Justice, Environment, Green, Manchester, Women

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Guardian – Has the axe fallen on Manchester’s green spaces?

Posted on February 7, 2013 | 1 Comment
Alexandra Park, ManchesterAn avenue of trees in Alexandra Park, Whalley Range, Manchester. 

Here’s my latest piece for the Guardian. 

As local authority cuts dig ever deeper and warden services face the chop, Greater Manchester‘s campaigners say green spaces are at an increased risk of over-use and vandalism. Every year, Manchester city council spends just under £2m on cutting grass across the city. It’s an important service, but green campaigners think that one month’s worth of grass cutting would be better spent on saving an important warden service that cares for the region’s entire 55,000-hectare Mersey Valley.

“The council has a legal obligation to conserve biodiversity to protect it and enhance it,” says Dave Bishop, chair of Friends of Chorlton Meadows. “I don’t see how they can do that without a warden service for the Valley.”

The Mersey Valley, which stretches to Stockport in the east and the Manchester Ship Canal in Irlam to the west, has been providing relief to stressed urbanites for decades. Its future, however, is in the balance. After worrying rumours reached Bishop that the Valley’s warden services would be disbanded in March, he got in touch with his local councillors. They confirmed the service would indeed be up for assessment. As Trafford council had decided not to pay its share of the funding, the city council proposes to withdraw its £150,000 from the Mersey Valley warden service from March.

“I understand that cuts have to happen but without the warden the area will become very neglected,” says Bishop. “There will be a lot more litter and vandalism and maybe motorcycle scramblers wrecking the area if we are not very careful. The fate of a well-loved piece of local green space hangs in the balance,” says Bishop. Continue reading →

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Posted in Environment, Green, Manchester

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MCM: Manchester’s Climate Vulnerable – An Interview with Atiha Chaudry

Posted on February 6, 2013 | Leave a comment

P1000904Whilst it’s easy to think that all those people ‘really vulnerable’ to climate change live in far away places, the truth is they don’t. They live in cities great and small all over the world. And there are some living right here in Manchester. Who are they? Well, there are the marginalised, the socially, economically and politically vulnerable. They are our old, our BME, our asylum seekers and refugees and whilst our climate keeps changing, we ought to figure out a way to protect them.

Last year, the Manchester BME Network got £15,000 from Defra to do exactly that. They were tasked with “mapping the needs of BME, older people and refugee and asylum communities to better understand their needs and concerns about the impact of a changing change.” The project also wanted to find the gaps and consider how these might be addressed. The project is led by Muslim Communities UK (MC-UK) with direct support from Manchester BME Network (MBMEN), Salford Refugee Forum and Creative Hands Foundation. The partners interviewed 100 people and held four focus groups.

Ahead of the final report which will be released next week, MCFly caught up with Atiha Chaudry, from MBMEN, to talk about their findings and what happens next.

Could you tell us a little about the Manchester BME network and the work it does? Continue reading →

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Posted in climate change, Climate Justice, Manchester, Refugees, Women

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@Mcr_Climate : Brussels sprouts action on climate change gas reporting

Posted on July 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Manchester Climate Monthly co-editor Arwa Aburawa travels all the way to Brussels and sees parliamentarians decide that European states must now take account of the “sub-national context” when measuring their greenhouse gas emissions. What does this mean for Manchester? Read on…

Manchester City Council has been struggling to keep its promises to monitor its greenhouse gases. For example the annual carbon budget report, which would help make sure the council is on the right track to meet its ambitious targets, failed to appear on the agenda of the July meeting of the City Council’s Executive. The Council’s “Environmental Advisory Panel” has met only once all year, and the Greater Manchester Climate Strategy Implementation Plan is delayed again. So, where does the European Union come in?

Well, as you are probably aware the Kyoto Protocol and various agreements at Cancun and Durban have helped set binding carbon targets for the UK and most member states of the EU. To help monitor their progress, a ‘monitoring mechanism’ was established. However, there are two major problems with the monitoring mechanism: the reporting isn’t transparent or consistent enough between nations, and it is also too focused on the national level to be useful regionally.

The local context is missing and that is a real problem. Councillor Neil Swannick* developed a proposal that has been put to the European Committee of Regions on ‘monitoring and reporting greenhouse gases’.

Continue reading →

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Posted in climate change, Climate Justice, Copenhagen, Environment, Green, Manchester

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The Forgotten Victorian Feminist – Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy

Posted on May 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

As an advocate of ‘free love’, a pacifist and more controversially a secularist, the Victorian feminist Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy did not exactly lead a conventional life. Born in Eccles in 1833 and self-educated, she went on to become a significant pioneer of the British women’s emancipation movement. She was at the heart of almost every Victorian feminist campaign ranging from the demand for better education, the right to vote, the rights of prostitutes to the sensitive issue of marital rape.

Unfortunately, her rather forthright nature as well as the scandal surrounding her pregnancy out of wedlock meant that she was marginalised in official histories. In accounts by the Pankhurst family, she is unfairly portrayed as a bad mother, a scandalous ‘free love’ secularist; her partner Ben Elmy is painted as a cruel and unfaithful man. Maureen Wright, who teaches history at the University of Portsmouth, wanted to challenge that misrepresentation with a more balanced look at Wolstenholme-Elmy’s life.

In her book Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and the Victorian Feminist Movement – The biography of an insurgent woman, Wright portrays the complex and also contradictory nature of her subject. The book is broken down into eight chapters which chart Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy’s life from her birth to her death at the age of 84 in March 1918 – just days after hearing the good news that women had been granted the right to vote. Arwa Aburawa interviewed Maureen Wright for Manchester Radical History. Continue reading →

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Posted in History, Manchester, Protest, Public Sphere, Women, Youth

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Ethical Consumer Magazine: Is Islamic Banking an Ethical Alternative?

Posted on February 24, 2012 | 1 Comment

Arwa Aburawa explores whether a religious take on banking offers any alternative for ethical consumers.

In 2008, as the world slid into what is now known as the ‘Great Recession’, Islamic finance was witnessing something of a resurgence. This faith-based banking hit the headlines as an ethical and sustainable alternative to the conventional, profit-driven banking system. If the financial crisis was caused by irresponsible banking, then Islamic finance – which is risk-averse and anti-speculation – could be the solution went the logic.

But is Islamic finance really the answer to our banking prayers?

In some aspects, Islamic banking does follow more ethical guidelines. It forbids what it calls effortless profit (interest) and generally prohibits investment in activities such as gambling, tobacco, pornography, pork, alcohol, military armament and speculation. It is asset-based which means that wealth can only be generated through legitimate trade and investment in assets. Making money from money is forbidden and it is this principle which has been highlighted by Islamic financial experts as creating a more stable and transparent system of banking. Continue reading →

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Posted in Development, Economy, Environment, Ethical, Green, Islam, Manchester, Middle East, Muslims

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Big Issue North: Off-beam decision on solar panels

Posted on January 20, 2012 | 1 Comment

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Posted in Big Issue North, climate change, Climate Justice, Council, Environment, Green, Green Energy, Manchester

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INTERVIEW: John Ashcroft and Manchester’s bid for the Green Investment Bank

Posted on January 10, 2012 | 1 Comment


Arwa Aburawa met up with John Ashcroft, the man leading Manchester’s bid to host the Green Investment Bank, to talk about the rainy city’s chances and whether it can see off competition from London

Manchester is one of over twenty cities which has made an official bid to host the Green Investment Bank (GIB) which will be government-funded to the tune of £3 billion. The bank is expected to funnel £15 billion of private finance into green projects over four years and employ up to 70 members of staff. Its main areas of work will be offshore wind, energy from waste, waste processing/recycling, non-domestic energy efficiency and supporting the Green Deal. The final decision on which city gets the bank will be made by Vince Cable, aided by an advisory panel, this February and the bank will be launched April 2012. Continue reading →

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Posted in climate change, Environment, Green, Green Energy, Manchester

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Guardian: Manchester Uni contract raises questions on organic food market

Posted on November 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

A new organic food co-op in Manchester is bucking the trend by working with a large public sector client- but can smaller food organisations survive when local organic produce is in short supply? Arwa Aburawa reports.

Box of organic vegetablesOrganic veg – in this case from the Ethical Superstore. Photograph: Organic Picture Library/Rex Features

This September saw the launch of a new organic food coop in Manchester called Manchester Veg People. It had been the culmination of years of work by local organisations such as the Kindling Trust and brought together local organic farmers with various clients such as sustainable groceries and restaurants. The unique thing about the coop, however, was that one of its clients was the Manchester University which has 29 eateries and as such requires a substantial amount of produce.

“We are lucky to have Manchester University as one of our clients,” admits Chris Walsh, who works at Kindling Trust which is part of the co-op. “They are our biggest customer by far and the public sector is a stable market for growers to tap into.” The co-op wants to ensure that growers receive a living wage for their work by selling their fruit and veg at market value and so having a stable market is one way to ensure that. Walsh adds that they are hoping to take on more public sector clients such as prisons and hospitals in the future which will also mean that organic food is reaching those not normally that interested in the quality of their food. Continue reading →

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Posted in Food, Manchester

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