Climate News 25:03
I’ve written enough climate change strategies to know how it goes when it comes to the internal engagement part of the process.
We have meetings with officers and managers from Planning, Open Space, Traffic, Community Development, Infrastructure and so on. We ask them about how climate change is affecting their work at the moment and discuss possible actions which will go into the final strategy. But this approach is based upon an assumption that the staff we are engaging are across everything climate change. This varies from council to council and while specialist staff are improving their knowledge, the connection to climate change whether through opportunities to reduce emissions or adapt to impacts, is not always obvious. Talking to a council officer the other day, we wondered whether a more productive approach might be to: - first assess the level of understanding and knowledge of climate change amongst specialist, non-environmental staff, - provide training and capacity building where needed, and - only then begin to develop a climate strategy. Maybe this would lead to better outcomes not only in terms of the quality of the content of the strategy but also embed climate action earlier and deeper in those teams. Has anyone tried this? Or interested in trying this approach?
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