Climate Community Leaders

Cara Pike is the founder and director of Climate Access, a nonprofit focused on building political and public support for climate solutions through its learning network for nonprofit and government leaders, pilot projects that test new engagement approaches, and communication research and strategy consulting services. Her work includes the creation of the Preparation Frame: A Guide for Understanding and Engaging Around Climate Impacts; the Ecological Roadmap, a values-based approach to building support for environmental protection; Climate Communications Behavior Change – A Guide for Practitioners, and other widely used publications and toolkits. Cara regularly advises government agencies and nonprofit organizations. Clients have included the City of Boston, Ocean Science Trust, Union of Concerned Scientists, Province of Alberta, and others. 

Most Americans accept climate change is happening and support low-carbon solutions, yet aren’t taking significant action. The issue’s continued low public priority and lack of clarity regarding solutions is a challenge for municipal leaders. Through Climate Access’s Climate Community Leaders program, trusted community leaders motivate their social networks to take actions that help advance municipal climate action goals. 

Community leaders receive training to host dialogues at their schools, churches, businesses, and other settings to discuss climate risks with their peers; provide them with an opportunity to share their concerns and ideas for promoting resilience with city staff; and support them to develop their own plans to prepare for impacts and cut carbon in keeping with the city’s goals. The program amplifies the need to prepare for climate impacts and create more resilient communities by providing the tools needed to motivate community members to get involved with city planning efforts. 

A majority of Americans accept the reality of climate change and are worried about impacts, however, the issue remains a low priority for many individuals. This lack of urgency makes it challenging for local leaders to engage the public in developing and implementing climate action plans and programs. While awareness of extreme weather is increasing due to lived experience, many community members remain unaware of the extent to which future hazards will impact them. There is also limited understanding of the steps being taken at the local level to increase resilience to extreme weather and advance low-carbon solutions, or how individuals can play a meaningful role in achieving climate action goals, thus hindering a sense of efficacy and norms for taking action.

Frontline communities often face barriers to participation in climate action planning and programs due to income, race, health, language and other factors. Additionally, local governments have limited staff and resources to dedicate to community engagement and capacity building. Yet, public input is critical for meeting county climate resilience goals and ensuring that strategies are inclusive and equitably reflect community concerns. A new activation model is necessary to prioritize the issue and provide clear action pathways.

The Climate Community Leaders program invites community leaders with a deep understanding of and connection to neighborhoods most at risk from climate impacts to partner with local government, raise awareness of hazards, and activate their networks. Community leaders are trained to facilitate climate dialogues and action planning sessions with their friends, families, colleagues, and neighbors, and in turn, dialogue participants are mobilized to take tangible steps to increase community and personal resilience. 

Based on Climate Access’s work with the City of Boston to create the highly successful, Greenovate Boston Leaders program, the Climate Community Leaders program uses a peer engagement model to motivate and provide opportunities for community members to increase their resilience to local climate hazards and adopt low-carbon solutions. Community leaders are given tools and trained in how to facilitate a co-creation dialogue with their peers. Participants share their observations and concerns regarding hazards as well as their ideas for solutions that would be effective in their neighborhoods. 

Climate Access is pioneering innovative engagement approaches that are reaching and mobilizing thousands of Americans in dozens of communities across the country on behalf of nonprofits, government agencies and businesses. As part of the Climate Community Leaders program, action steps are outlined that community members can take within each pathway, including no-cost or cost-saving activities. Community members are supported by the leaders to develop their own tailored action plans and can work individually or as a group (i.e. creating a plan to cut carbon at a school or church). Community leaders and city staff follow up with dialogue participants one and three months after events to gauge progress and provide additional resources to support the implementation of personal action plans.

The program actively works to reduce barriers to participation by providing a stipend to community leaders for each event they host to cover costs and/or their time, ensure a diversity of participants and show respect for the skills and time people are contributing. City staff work hand-in-hand with community leaders to design and promote events, and help organize networking events and mentoring opportunities so community leaders can learn from and support one another.

Climate and racial justice are inseparable. Frontline communities of color are hit first and worst by both the drivers and impacts of the climate crisis, from the negative health effects of air pollution to the devastating consequences of extreme weather events. The Climate Community Leaders program creates a seat at the table for frontline communities disproportionately impacted by climate change to help shape local policy and be part of the solution. 

Climate Access worked with the City of Boston to design the Greenovate Boston Leaders Program. It launched in 2017 as the Climate Ready Boston Community Leaders and was initially focused on involving community members in the development of the city’s climate adaptation plan including the creation of neighborhood-level resilience pilot projects. Feedback from the sessions was taken back to the city and incorporated into planning efforts. 

Climate Access partnered with the city again to evaluate results and redesign the program based on feedback from community leaders and dialogue participants. As a result, the initiative was relaunched in 2018 under the Greenovate banner. While raising awareness of climate hazards is still a goal, the program now focuses on sharing information about what the city is doing

and the ways in which community members can plug into decision-making. Community leaders also support their social networks to take steps to increase community and personal resilience to climate change through adaptation and mitigation programs. At the beginning of 2020, the program began its 6th cohort, having trained 300 community leaders who hosted 100 dialogue events and reached close to 3,000 community members. 

Now more than ever, bold political leadership and an engaged public are required to increase climate, health and economic resilience. Climate Access is applying and refining climate engagement best practices to reach thousands of people in communities across the United States including those most at risk from the impacts of climate change and often left out of local decision-making, increase their awareness of climate risks and motivate them to take steps to prepare for impacts and cut emissions.

We are proud of how the Climate Community Leaders program is providing frontline communities with tools and support to develop community-led coastal resilience solutions. The program is activating community members to take actions that have resulted in concrete action steps, such as a senior housing complex that created a resiliency-ready toolkit and purchased medical supplies to prepare for flooding and severe storms. We are currently launching a similar program with the City of Cambridge and creating a plan to expand to other locations.

Climate Access is a nonprofit organization focused on building political and public support for climate and clean energy solutions by developing and promoting effective communication and engagement approaches. We run a resource and training center for more than 3,600 members from nonprofits, government agencies and academic institutions; pilot new approaches to engagement; and provide strategic communication consulting services. We combine in-depth communication and public engagement experience with a knowledge of science and policy to make complex issues easy to understand and to involve stakeholders outside the “environmental choir” in decision making and supporting policy implementation.

Climate Access regularly partners with local governments to develop framing and engagement approaches, including piloting the use of virtual reality as a way to involve community members in climate planning and action in three California communities and working with the City of Boston to design a community leadership program that is reaching thousands of community members in the neighborhoods most at risk from climate impacts and involving them in resilience efforts. We also develop tailored communications and public engagement strategies for a broad range of nonprofit clients, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, Ceres, and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network.

2020 has been a year of global change and Climate Access has remained focused on what’s ahead - on the challenges recovering from the global health crisis presents, as well as the opportunities to accelerate a just transition to inclusive low-carbon economies and lifestyles. We are thinking through the communication and engagement tools, strategies and training climate leaders need to continue advancing efforts to prepare for climate impacts and reduce emissions. 

We made a number of important changes at Climate Access that place us in a strong position to face the new times. Based on an evaluation, which included feedback from our members, we decided to hone in on replicating the communication, engagement and training approaches we developed that have had the greatest success in changing the climate conversation and activating broad segments of the public. These shifts in our programmatic approach have already resulted in an increased clarity of focus and expanded the capacity of the organization. 

Climate Access provides more than 3,600 members from nonprofits, government agencies, academic institutions and community-based organizations with access to an extensive collection of public opinion and social science research, interactive skill-building training, problem-solving sessions and communication and engagement tips and tools to raise the communications capacity of the field. We use values-based frames and narratives to shift the climate conversation and build support for policy change and new social norms. We provide strategic guidance and training to individual organizations and government agencies as well as networks of groups to harmonize and amplify outreach strategies. 

Climate Access is pioneering innovative engagement approaches that are reaching and mobilizing thousands of Americans in dozens of communities across the country on behalf of nonprofits, government agencies and businesses. We use social science, polling, best practices from the field and stakeholder interviews to inform the design of outreach strategies and work with our partners to implement and test the approach. We distill lessons learned from our hands-on projects and share them with Climate Access members so effective strategies and models can be replicated in other contexts. 

Climate Access has demonstrated the value of going beyond environmental frames and using new narrative concepts that have since become widely used, such as illustrating the interconnectedness between energy use and climate change and emphasizing the need for carbon-free or low-carbon energy. We introduced the idea of shifting from a “should we act?” to a “we are acting” posture with the preparation frame that places a greater emphasis on the need for communities to ready themselves for current and future climate impacts.

We aim to create the cultural conditions required to make the shift to low-carbon solutions including the political and public will required for policy change and implementation, and the social capital needed to build resilient communities. Our theory of change regarding climate engagement is a ground-up approach to shifting cultural conditions. This is true whether it’s local, state or national campaigns, we ground our methodology and guidance in the relevant context. Buy-in at the local level is critical. We work with groups that operate on all levels from public and nonprofit sectors and provide the communication and engagement tools to get you on the right playing field. 

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Climate Access will activate thousands of community members to do their part to respond to the climate emergency via our virtual reality projects, community climate leadership program, advancement of the phase-out narrative, and by supporting our members through our communication tools and trainings. 

Our work wouldn't be possible without the support of our generous donors. 

We build support for our work by delivering effective values-based frames and storytelling strategies and helping groups activate support for policy change and normalizing climate action at the local level.

Stand.Earth: Strategic communication support for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative and the Standing Against Fossil Fuels (SAFE) campaign

City of Manhattan Beach: Look Ahead project, using virtual reality to raise awareness about the risks of sea-level rise and help community members envision and weigh in on available solutions

International Council for Clean Transportation (ICCT): Strategic communication support

Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing & Organizing (WIEGO): Strategic communication support

The Solutions Project: 100% renewable energy for 100% of the people case study