Climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss affects everybody. From pollution reducing inner-city air quality, to growing rainfall levels leading to water contamination, to wildfires sweeping through the landscape year on year. One way or another, most of us have seen or felt the effects of our changing climate.
Our changing climate is a shared experience, and a shared responsibility. That is precisely why public engagement has become a key part of both the development and implementation of climate strategy. In recent years, good public engagement has become crucial to any effective climate action plan.
The following article discusses how to develop a climate engagement strategy that works, and what GovTech platforms can do to help that process.
What is a Climate Action Plan?
A Climate Action Plan (or CAP) is a strategic framework that is used to guide efforts in addressing climate change. Usually, a Climate Action Plan is specific to a certain geographic area. This may be based on a particular city, district council area or even entire regions.
The aim of a Climate Action Plan is generally to reduce carbon emissions, enhance resilience to climate risk, and to create a sustainable transition to more environmentally friendly practices. As climate plans are not single policy proposals but rather broad strategy documents, they cut across multiple sectors, including energy, transport, planning, land use and agriculture.
Although Climate Action Plans vary with local context, almost all CAPs seek to outline certain aspects of a climate strategy, such as:
- Goals: what is the plan trying to achieve. When it comes to something as complex as our interconnected environment, setting goals can be a complicated process as it requires strategic environmental assessment
- How goals were chosen. Particularly when resources are stretched, justifying those goals is important. This is especially true if climate goals are in opposition to other important aims, such as house building or infrastructure.
- How results will be measured. Success is sometimes hard to quantify, particularly as sometimes the effects of projects won’t be felt for years to come.
- What actions will be taken that are preventative in nature. For example, reducing carbon emissions from public buildings.
- What actions will be taken that treat current issues. For example, fortifying flood defences.
- How aspects of the strategy will be funded and which organisations and bodies will be responsible for actioning different aspects of the plan.
It is a structured, place-based approach to planning that seeks to tackle both the causes of climate change, and the effect it has on the environment and citizens. The best Climate Action Plans are “living documents” in that they are responsive to the rapid changes that can sometimes happen due to ecological damage.
A well thought out and comprehensive Climate Action Plan can have a significant effect on the local environment, and contribute to tackling climate change overall. In order to meet everyone’s needs however, it is important to engage citizens fully in local climate strategy.
The Importance of Public Climate Engagement
As the climate crisis affects everyone, everyone should have the opportunity to contribute to how we respond to it. Engaging the public in climate strategy helps ensure that policies reflect the needs and experiences of those most impacted, while still achieving reduction targets. It can help develop a sense of shared responsibility, and trust in the decision-making processes around climate action.
Climate strategies can sometimes disrupt existing systems and norms, so it is especially important that there is lots of existing public support for any given strategy. Engaging the wider community in climate action serves many purposes. These include:
- Understanding the climate-related issues faced by the public fully. Local knowledge and lived experience can provide insight into both the impact of climate change itself and the impact of current policies.
- Increasing the perceived legitimacy of any given strategy. A strategy that was ‘co-authored’ by the wider community can make policies feel like less of an imposition and increase compliance.
- Citizens are a source of creative, community-led solutions that may offer solutions that have not previously been considered by decision-makers.
- Across the world, those most impacted by climate change are often the most powerless to stop it. That is also true within the UK. Good public engagement should empower marginalised voices, and their experience should inform any climate strategy.
- Adhering to legal requirements. Some actions taken as part of a climate strategy will require public consultation. Involving the public in the wider strategy can help meet those legal requirements more smoothly.
Engaging communities in climate strategy can be a powerful tool that creates a mutually-informative exchange. However, sometimes this engagement is easier said than done. Climate action is sometimes portrayed as a lofty goal, too large for any given place or community to truly have an impact on. Actions taken to combat climate change can be portrayed in a one-sided manner by hostile parties, who only want to highlight immediate inconveniences. Finding methods to drive public engagement and provide accurate, factual information on climate change and climate policy is therefore of the utmost importance.
How to Increase Public Engagement with Climate Strategy
Engaging the public in climate strategy cannot be a one-off event. Instead, it has to be a sustained effort to educate and include people in the process of building a strategy. Engagement should be structured, transparent, and genuinely participatory.
Engage Across Platforms
The first thing to remember about engaging the public is that there is no one-size fits all solution. Some members of the public will be very present on social media, and you’ll be able to generate awareness of events, consultations and other citizen engagement activities there. Others will have virtually no interaction with social media, but will attend town hall meetings or frequent social clubs.
The first step in engaging is always informing. That’s why it’s important to make sure citizens are aware of opportunities to participate in climate strategy through multiple avenues. These include:
- Social media, particularly Facebook but newer platforms like TikTok can be effective at reaching a younger audience.
- Public Meetings.
- Local newspapers.
- Public signage in busy areas.
- Posters in community centres and noticeboards.
Exactly which of these platforms are most useful will depend on the context of the activity. However, having some coverage in all of the above will help ensure a general awareness of any process that involves consulting the public.
Engage Communities
Even if a climate strategy consultation is widely known, it can sometimes be difficult to engage with every community. This could be due to a lack of trust in the process or those running it, or may be simply that these communities are “harder to reach” through traditional media.
A community engagement strategy is therefore a useful additional step in the engagement process. It is vitally important that all communities contribute to any climate strategy, but this is particularly true for poor or marginalised groups who are often the first to be personally affected by climate change.
Engage Stakeholders
A Climate Action Plan can sometimes “disrupt” systems. It may mean a change to how houses are built, how transport is managed and how businesses are run. That is why engaging key stakeholders in climate action early is vitally important.
Climate strategies often encounter push back from stakeholders who feel their interests may be impacted. This happens more so when those stakeholders are unaware of how climate change itself will cause impact, or if they’re imagining new policies will have a greater impact on their sector than it will.
All climate strategies should include a thorough stakeholder engagement plan for this reason. Reaching out to key stakeholders personally, and even holding events like stakeholder workshops can make a big difference to outcomes.
Be Accessible and Inclusive
Accessibility is more than just a buzzword. For all citizens to be involved in designing their climate strategy, the way information is shared and presented must be both accessible and inclusive.
Accessibility is a broad term that can encompass many different measures. It may mean designing engagement activities in ways that account for disability, such as having an audio induction loop at a town meeting or braille versions of handouts.
Accessibility and inclusion also means presenting information in a way that is simple for all parties to understand. This means using plain language wherever possible, explaining terms that may not be familiar to some, and providing foreign language translations where appropriate.
Making consultation activities easier to access is also a large part of inclusion. Using a “one-stop” digital engagement platform where participants need only engage in one place, for example, means that citizens can receive information, provide feedback and be kept in-the-loop easily.
Use Place-Based Tools for Place-Based Ideas
Finally, any climate strategy must be place-based at its heart. The way climate change affects any given area is different and location specific. Some areas may deal with droughts and others with floods; some cities may have higher levels of pollution, while others struggle to deal with growing summer temperatures.
The causes of carbon emissions and pollution will also vary from area to area. A climate strategy must take into consideration existing jobs, transport networks and infrastructure before making plans.
As the problem is place-based, so too is the solution. The availability of sophisticated geospatial mapping tools allows citizens to engage with the issues in their area in a way that is easy to visualise. It is a practical tool for developing a community-led climate strategy, as it highlights how different groups use and experience their environment spatially.
People of different ages, backgrounds, and lifestyles often interact with the same environment in different ways. These patterns may not be visible through standard data collection, but participatory mapping can reveal them clearly. When combined with GIS data, mapping can also help to communicate complex plans or proposed climate-related policies in a way that is easy to understand. Presenting information spatially can improve public understanding and increase engagement.
Case Study: Camden Council’s Climate Action Plan
In 2019, Camden Council began working on a five-year Climate Action Plan. They understood the importance of involving the public in their decision-making at every level, and wanted a more collaborative process.
Camden council convened one of the first Citizens Assemblies on the climate crisis in order to deliberate on local priorities and develop recommendations for action. They also conducted an online consultation using Citizen Space, which gave them both depth and breadth in the kinds of responses they were receiving from the public. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, the council were able to develop an effective Climate Action Plan.
In order to maximise public involvement, the document was made available to view and comment on by the public. Finally, three months after the consultation was closed, Camden Council published their CAP, and publicly declared it to have been created in collaboration with the people of Camden.
Citizen Space is the go-to platform for connecting governments, developers, and citizens. If you’d like to learn more about how our software supports the development of climate strategies and action plans, book a free demo and we’ll walk you through it.
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