The Commission’s roots go back to the run-up to COP26 in 2021, when a summit of sustainability leaders across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent identified a shared problem: a lot of good climate and nature work was happening across the county, but too much of it in isolation, with organisations unaware of what others nearby were already doing.
Out of that summit came a decision to build something more deliberately joined-up — a Commission convened by a broad coalition of founding partners spanning local government, academia, the environment sector and business, built to create the connections and shared dialogue that county-wide action needs.
In the years since, membership has grown to around thirty organisations, spanning sectors from healthcare to emergency services to energy. The remit has broadened too, from climate alone to climate and nature together, reflecting how closely those two challenges are linked.
There’s a longer, fuller version of this story we’re keen to tell properly — including the people and organisations who made the early running happen. If you were part of those first conversations and want to help us get the history right, we’d love to hear from you.