Meet the man with the best job in Bristol

“I don’t have a climate qualification,” Mark Leach tells me, in conversation at the Create Centre where Bristol City Council’s climate team were previously based before moving to City Hall.

Instead, his background is in community work including six years in England’s most deprived estates before moving into environmental sustainability and, eventually, to lead on delivering the council’s climate engagement strategy.

At the role’s core, he says, he’s a ‘connector’, liaising between communities and the council and helping bind the various partnerships working to make Bristol greener and fairer.

The city has been recognised nationally for its climate action. So what is it that Bristol’s getting right?

Mark has worked closely with the Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership, and says their Community & Nature Climate Action Project has been “incredible” for the city – photo: ShamPhat Photography

It comes down to attitude, approach and – perhaps most fundamentally – an ability to secure funding says Mark: “The team is great. We go for a lot of bids. There’s so little money for councils so we have to win funding, which we’re really good at. Bristol punches above its weight in that way.

“The city has made some amazing progress. But activists say we’re not doing enough – and of course, they’re right. Both things are true.

“We didn’t get the 2015 European Green Capital award for being a utopia. It was an award for doing really well in a very difficult context. We get the recognition for just trying damn hard and having some wins along the way.

“And that sums up how I feel about it, there’s no simple answer. I can’t say happy, sad, frustrated, pleased, delighted: it’s all of those things. The key thing is we’re doing the work better than we were.”

He’s keen to stress it’s a joint effort by “communities, individuals, families, activists, successive different political administrations, the voluntary sector and businesses… That sounds like a cop-out because it’s everyone, but they are literally all doing stuff!”

But he is particularly proud of the Community Climate & Nature Action (CCNA) project, led by the Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership of more than 1000 businesses and organisations which, he says, has made an “incredible difference” to Bristol.

The project has supported 17 communities including the city’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, refugees and Disabled people to implement climate action plans that improve local quality of life: “We’re the most segregated core city in the UK. We’ve got stark economic inequalities and there’s racial inequality as well. So we’re starting from a really challenging place.

“Progress on inclusion and involving communities are the things I’m excited about in terms of environmental success.”

The Heart of BS13 closed loop compost initiative takes local food waste and turns it into nutrient-rich compost which is then used to grow local produce at Hartcliffe City Farm, in an area recognised as a food desert – photo: Heart of BS13

Mark is reluctant to single out any one project – “You’re not going to ask, ‘Who’s your favourite child?!’” – but when pushed mentions one in Lockleaze: “They’ve done tree planting, they’ve got pollinator and food plants on what they call green deserts, bits of housing green that would occasionally get parked on.

“You have to talk about Heart of BS13’s closed-loop composting system, where they take restaurant food waste, compost it, grow food and sell it back to the restaurants.

“The Disability programme, Ambition Lawrence Weston, Rising Arts – all amazing. And places like Shirehampton that are just very quietly grafting away, doing great stuff.”

The key to getting communities on board, he says, is to start from the issues they’re facing – energy bills, food prices, transport – then follow with climate change.

It’s a myth “that needs to be challenged and dismissed” that only middle class communities care about climate, but it’s critical to align people’s daily challenges with climate issues.

“What you find is the difference between relative and absolute concern,” explains Mark.

“If you talk about climate change, you will get a certain reaction from communities that are choosing between heating and eating. If you start from where they’re at, talk about their issues and then get on to climate, actually most people are concerned about climate change.”

Mark Leach was crowned overall Sustainability Legend by a panel of experts at Bristol24/7’s inaugural Bristol Legends awards ceremony photo: ShotAway

Looking to the future, Mark flags a handful of exciting projects underway including Bristol Climate Hub, Nature Together which will support community care of green spaces and the Blue-Green Infrastructure Strategy to protect and enhance waterways.

He also cites Bristol City Leap’s retrofitting and heat networks and the work of Bristol Energy Network a 16-year-old organisation that inspired Mark so much he joined as a director in 2018.

And he’s seeing a shifting focus towards adaptation measures, with projects designed to future-proof the city against rising temperatures and water levels like Keep Bristol Cool, the Avon Flood Strategy and installation of sustainable drainage systems on the list of priorities.

There’s clearly a lot Mark still wants to achieve, but in considering Bristol’s future what’s the logical endpoint of his work?

More and better, he says: giving the opportunity to create climate action plans to every community citywide, and supporting them to tell their own stories so they have “a voice that’s more representative and more heard.”

Ultimately, it’s about empowerment, and it is this focus on enabling that won him the Bristol Legends sustainability crown.

“Community workers always say, I want to do myself out of a job,” he muses. “It’s probably not possible because there’s always another community. But with the 17 that have gone through the programme, seeing those organisations change – the resilience, growth and development…

“Working with these communities has been the most fun, privileged, eye-opening time. They’re all such amazing people. I’ve got the best job in the city I think.”

Main photo: Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership

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• Emergency climate briefings planned across Bristol
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• One Love One Planet: Bringing the climate conversation home
• Group offers councils guidance on climate and disability
• ‘There are many reasons to be cheerful about climate and nature in Bristol’