Lewis Nelson
Manchester Climate Change Agency
Give us a brief description of your background
For three and a half years I worked as a young carers support worker in Salford, working directly with children and young people. I created the concept of the Greater Manchester Youth Combined Authority and helped to turn it into a reality in 2018. I was also elected to represent my community as a councillor in 2019 and was subsequently relected in 2021. At the Manchester Climate Change Agency my role is as the Manchester Youth Champion for Climate Action. My main focus is to help our youth board to launch and deliver their manifesto. I also work at a strategic level in Manchester to identify and improve opportunities for young people to have a say on the climate action agenda.
Who/what inspires you?
The unlikely leaders who make the biggest impact!
There are community leaders in my town who inspire me, people who selflessly put their community ahead of their own self-interest. The ordinary wonderful communitarians who have values of citizenship and helping the less fortunate inspire me every day.
Leaders who come from the most unlikely of backgrounds and make a real-world difference are my role models. Leaders such as Jacinda Ardern motivate me, and leaders of the cloth Dennis Skinner was cut from, ground me.
What does the word leadership make you think of?
Somebody who knows their Maris Pipers from their King Edwards! Somebody who has purpose, vision, determination, likeability, and qualities of inclusiveness and open self-reflection in aid of betterment.
How do you feel about taking part in the Future Leaders programme?
I am humbled to have been asked to attend. The Future Leaders programme feels like a real opportunity to build lasting links with emerging leaders in the sustainability sector. It is proving to be an opportunity for self-reflection and an opportunity to build self-awareness. Knowledge building and challenging accepted norms is an incredibly helpful element.
What do you think are the keys to a sustainable future?
Disruption to the status quo. Britain are global leaders in this space, but to both accelerate the pace of change and ensure an ethical transition to a greener humanity, there will need to be lots of disruption to convention.
Our consumption, habits with dealing with ‘waste’ and our global economic system will need to change or adapt at pace to avoid both climate catastrophe and ‘dumping’ of dirty technologies and industries on the developing world.
We will also need global collaboration and diplomacy. The green industrial revolution is here at a point in history where the balance of nature is increasingly being lost. The green recovery must protect resources and critical ecosystems to avoid climate catastrophe. Short term gain needs to be balanced against long term devastation – which will disproportionately hurt the world’s poor.
