Dr Catherine Flitcroft is Head of Access and Environment at the British Mountaineering Council (BMC). She is responsible for managing the BMC’s relationship with Government and other countryside and recreational organisations. She also leads the BMC on policy and legislation issues affecting the cliff and mountain environment and is responsible for transformative climate action across the organisation including GB Climbing.
Over the past few years, she has been responsible for collating the organisations GHG emissions data and ensuring the organisations Climate and Sustainability Action Plan is adhered to (reporting to the UN Sport for Climate Action Framework and more recently, UN Sport for Nature).
To engage with the wider membership and athletes, she has also developed an overarching Sustainable Steps Campaign which contains a host of useful information and advice / checklists as well as a BMC Lift Share site. These all sit alongside a much larger Climate Project which is a collection of nature-based solutions (based in the UK) which are helping to protect and restore nature and address the climate and biodiversity crisis. By tapping into our membership, the BMC has raised a significant amount of money to help transform the moorland landscape of the Peak District and North Pennines and bring the underlying blanket peat into good condition – helping to save about 62,000 tonnes of avoided carbon loss per year. Cath is particularly passionate about bogs as her PhD focussed on the reasons for their inception.
She was once a champion athlete and has, by her own admission, spent far too much time in the wilderness of Scotland.
