Community-based participatory climate action

Abstract

Non-technical summary. Improving the flow of information between governments and local communities is paramount to achieving effective climate change mitigation and adaptation. We propose five pathways to deepen participation and improve community-based climate action. The pathways can be summarized as visualization, simulations to practice decisionmaking, participatory budgeting and planning, environmental civic service, and education and curriculum development. These pathways contribute to improving governance by consolidating in governments the practice of soliciting and incorporating community participation while simultaneously giving communities the tools and knowledge needed to become active contributors to climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. Technical summary. Community participation is considered a key component in the design of responses to climate change. Substantial engagement of local communities is required to ensure information flow between governments and communities, but also because local communities are the primary sites of adaptation action. However, frontline communities are often excluded from decision-making and implementation processes due to political choices or failures to identify ways to make participatory frameworks more inclusive. Climate action requires the active engagement of communities in making consequential decisions, or what we term deepened participation. We propose five pathways to deepen participation: visualization, simulations to practice decision-making, participatory budgeting and planning, environmental civic service, and education and curriculum development. The five pathways identify strategies that can be incorporated into existing organizational and institutional frameworks or used to create new ones. Shortcomings related to each strategy are identified. Reflection by communities and governments is encouraged as they choose which participatory technique (s) to adopt. Social media summary. Climate action requires the active engagement of communities. Learn five pathways to get started deepening participation.

Exploring the Relationship between Built Environment Attributes and Physical Activity in Lower-Income Aging Adults: Preliminary Insights from a Multi-Level Trial

“…Efforts to improve both the aesthetics and street connectivity of neighborhoods can draw from the principles of EJ to create more walkable communities, thus promoting PA. Our finding that the perception of neighborhood aesthetics was significantly associated with walking in this population suggests that cost-effective improvements to the aesthetic components of the built environment (e.g., planting more street-level trees and greenery, replacing unused areas with parks, or beautifying existing green spaces to better fit the needs of communities) could be effective changes at the policy level to promote PA [79][80][81][82]. Though limited research currently exists to demonstrate that ecological changes to a neighborhood's aesthetics can improve PA outcomes, evidence of the benefits of "popup parks"-temporary parks created by bringing exercise equipment and potted greenery into greenspace-deficient areas-on PA behaviors suggests the potential promise of such built environment policy interventions [83,84].…”

Muddling through Climate Change: A Qualitative Exploration of India and U.S. Climate Experts’ Perspectives on Solutions, Pathways, and Barriers

“…This recognizes the limitations of one-way knowledge transfer approaches that have been of ongoing interest for climate science communication, e.g., [58]. Taken together, these point toward a need for research and practice to explore how community-level engagement might change what is seen as politically feasible [59,60]. It also suggests an important link to framing mitigation and adaptation as national or local in scope.…”