West Midlands FOE network
Hello once more. Many of you may remember me from a few years ago as a former chair of Birmingham FOE. I am now employed by Friends of the Earth as the Regional Campaigns Coordinator for the Midlands, based in Birmingham FOE's Warehouse in Digbeth. One aspect of my job is to develop FOE's work at the regional level.
The region in which Birmingham resides is not surprisingly the West Midlands. What maybe of news to you all is that the West Midlands region is not just the former metropolitan county council but as well as those 7 authorities also includes the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and the recently formed unitary authorities of Telford and Stoke on Trent. This results in a region of over 5 million people covering 13,000 square kilometers and a massive diversity of issues.
As you may know we have worked on a number of regional issues over the years through the West Midlands Transport Campaign. In September 2000 we held a regional meeting discussed the possibility of formally establishing a West Midlands FOE network. A draft constitution was sent out to all groups in the region setting out the reasoning for establishing a regional network. At a meeting on January 27th 2001 the network was launched on the back of that consultation.
It is proposed that West Midlands FOE contributes regular articles of a regional nature within Birmingham FOE's Action Briefing. This means that we will be able to share this newsletter with other groups in the region and that they will be able to find out more about the activities of Birmingham FOE. I hope this does not cause any problems for any supporters of Birmingham FOE nor regular readers of Action Briefing. It will remain first and foremost the newsletter of Birmingham FOE, but with hopefully some articles which will be of interest to not only supporters of Birmingham FOE but also FOE groups across the West Midlands region.
The recent discussion on the future of waste management across the West Midlands has highlighted the role of regional campaigning. The Environment Agency has recently published their Strategic Waste Management Assessments (SWMA) for the English Regions. In the West Midlands they have calculated that we will need up to 6 new 300,000 tonne waste-to-energy incinerators. Not only is this a complete waste of natural resources but also the locations chosen for these facilities could be very controversial.
The current battle over an incinerator proposal in Kidderminster has shown just how controversial an incinerator in anyone's backyard can become. We produced a regional press release highlighting a) that we already have more incinerators- five- than any other English region, b) the campaign in Kidderminster and c) that if the Environment Agency don't put resource management at the heart of the debate all we will end up with is discussion of the merits of one end-of-pipe solution over another. This was covered in a number of regional papers and on three radio stations within the region.
Hopefully this has added value to our local campaigns across the region as well as giving a voice to our regional work and campaign objectives.
Please do contact me on this or any other matter of regional importance.
Chris Crean 0121 643 9117.