In the past two years, we have seen an unprecedented recognition of the Climate Emergency with mass climate protests, school strikes, warnings from the Bank of England and the urgency to deliver the recently announced Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. Community-led responses can contribute significantly to these plans by reducing CO2 emissions and creating resilience towards climate change– from the smallest rural community to urban centres.

Digital, design and data-driven tools -whilst they aren’t silver bullets for solving climate change- can significantly accelerate community-led climate action by helping understand, mitigate, and adapt to climate change. Below, we identify gaps and opportunities for building shared digital infrastructure for climate action, highlight some consequences of the increased use and dependency on digital technologies and provide recommendations for funders to better support communities and catalyse systemic change.

Community-led Climate Action

The scale and urgency of the climate crisis mean that while major obligations in tackling climate change fall upon national governments, there is a big role for community-led local action. People power grown as community power — lifts the frame away from individual behaviours towards collective action and intentional ecosystems of change that will play a vital role in responding to the climate emergency.

Climate change mitigation measures reduce the extent of climate change by limiting greenhouse gas & CO2 emissions. These efforts can be categorised based on how communities reduce emissions into Renewable energy and energy efficiency projects such as community-owned renewable energy generators, district heating systems, and energy storage projects; localisation activities that reduce the need for goods and people to travel long distances such as local EVs and car clubs, cycling, and using local currency, food and supplier networks; nature-based solutions that combat the climate crisis by protecting habitats and expanding and/or protecting natural carbon sinks like forests; and commodity life cycle activities that promote reduced consumption, sharing, reusing and recycling of products.

Read the full article about digital infrastructure for climate action by Eirini Malliaraki at Medium.