Ambitious green policies can succeed at the ballot box, says London mayor Sadiq Khan, who recently won a third term despite expanding his pollution-charge scheme to more drivers in the UK capital.
At a climate conference for world mayors hosted by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academies of Science, Khan said the key to success lies in bringing the message home to voters that green policies—such as targeting polluting cars or inefficient homes—“are also policies that tackle social injustice, racial injustice, and health inequalities, as well,” reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Concrete policy details must be clearly delivered to voters in the weeks and months leading up to elections, the 53-year-old Khan told Pope Francis and C40 Cities mayors.
Elsewhere, a study by UCLA pointed to the role that a thriving local media can play in bringing big-picture projects and messages closer to home.
Khan cited his own experience as a mayoral candidate, which saw him defeating his Conservative rival Susan Hall by more than 276,000 votes, “despite anger in some quarters over the expansion last year of an Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEF) into the largest pollution-charging scheme in the world,” AFP writes.
His victory showed that “rather than backing down when it comes to green policies, you should double down,” Khan said.
He added that London now has 500,000 more trees and four times more cycling infrastructure than when he was first elected mayor in 2016. In his third term, Khan has plans to deliver a fully electric bus network to the city by 2030.
But everything hinges on getting voters onside for climate action, Khan stressed. “This year, more than half the world’s population will be voting, whether it’s the USA, whether it’s India, whether it’s the UK.”
Policy-makers need to advance climate action without stoking despair, the London mayor added. “We’ve got to make sure we give people hope,” he said. But that hope must be grounded in the reality that “we’ve got to adapt or die.”
Critical to such adaptation will be “enhanced collaboration between cities and national governments,” C40 Cities writes in a release. The C40 mayors attending the Vatican conference signed a Protocol for Climate Resilience alongside a number of global climate leaders. The protocol will be submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to take it forward to all nations, C40 said.
