Letter 28 — To Tracy Brabin
From regional delivery to civic imagination
Date: 10 November 2025
Recipient: Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire
Context
Week 4 concludes with the region’s political voice at its highest level.
Following letters to the city’s operational, democratic and institutional leaders, this final exchange turns to Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire — whose participation in the C40 Summit in Rio de Janeiro coincides with the opening of COP30.
Her statement this week - “We no longer have to sit around and wait for national leaders to rescue us from the cost-of-living and the climate crisis; we can take bold action ourselves to deliver real change.” - captures a renewed confidence in local leadership. For a region often overlooked in global forums, this visibility matters: it shows that credible climate action and civic determination can come from places long treated as peripheral.
Letter
Dear Mayor Brabin,
As COP30 begins, West Yorkshire stands on a global stage that it rarely occupies. Through your participation in the C40 summit in Rio de Janeiro, you have placed our region - one of the poorest in northern Europe - into a conversation that usually overlooks it. That visibility matters deeply: it reminds the world that serious climate leadership can come from places long treated as peripheral.
I’m writing as part of One Letter a Day, a year-long civic correspondence about the climate emergency, beginning here in Leeds. Each letter explores how institutions and citizens turn concern into action, and how local purpose connects to global momentum.
Your words this week captured something essential: “We no longer have to sit around and wait for national leaders to rescue us from the cost-of-living and the climate crisis — we can take bold action ourselves to deliver real change.” That spirit of agency and self-reliance is exactly what makes this region’s story worth telling. Thank you for giving it voice and weight at an international level.
What strikes me now is how that global representation can feed back into local confidence. At the Yorkshire & Humber Climate Commission meeting in Bradford this September, many tangible achievements were shared: the Clean Air Zone, heat-network expansion, retrofit programmes, hydrogen buses. Yet the stories that connect these projects to everyday lives often remain harder to see.
How is regional leadership making that connection visible, ensuring that climate action feels shared, not distant? And how is your office helping to turn citizens from witnesses into participants, so that global recognition and local ownership reinforce one another?
Moments like COP30 remind us that hope isn’t abstract; it’s built from proof that change is already happening, and that it belongs to everyone. By taking Yorkshire’s story to the world, you’re helping people here believe that again.
With appreciation,
Vivien Badaut
Founder, One Letter a Day
📨 Reply from Mayor Tracy Brabin
No reply has yet been received.
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Tomorrow’s post opens Week 5, shifting from regional leadership to national narratives — asking how the conversation about climate can be restored to the heart of British politics and public life.