This article is written by Jade Schofield, MSc, EP, Project Manager Sustainability & Climate Change, Town of Whitby, ON, Canada.

2019 saw a historic number of local governments declaring climate change an emergency, with many citing aggressive targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or mandating that climate change policies be mainstreamed into all of the actions of the local government.

These climate emergencies were the indication we needed to signal to our communities, our politicians and our fellow staff that we were finally ready for climate action. For some public servants who work on climate change, these calls to action were accompanied by a sigh of relief: it meant that it was now finally time to implement the climate change plan that had been sitting on a shelf gathering dust, and for others, it was an opportunity to create a climate strategy for the very first time with actual top-level buy-in.

Having sifted through many and written a few, I feel the best climate change plans are short and uncomplicated

Many have now overcome the hurdle of gaining the “buy-in” for climate action, but getting to a point where we go from “talking” to “walking “ is not an easy feat. In order to truly act on climate change, a significant culture change in the public sector is required — something that is not typically in a policymakers job description.

Changing the culture of any organisation requires it to be broken up into many small pieces, shuffling everything around, and then putting it back together into one unit that works. This is exactly how it feels to mainstream climate change into local government; climate risks and vulnerability assessments break the organisation into pieces, mainstreamed policies help with the reshuffle and dedicated policies stitch it all back together again.

Writing a novel won’t help you

To start integrating climate change, you need to start with a foundational mainstreamed policy document.

Climate change is easily one of the most complex and intertwined issues that governments have to deal with, and without a dedicated target or plan that responds directly to the issue you can easily get derailed at the risk of losing all momentum.  In my experience, the best way to stay on track is by creating a climate change plan, and it’s even better if there are two plans: one for climate adaptation, and one for mitigation. The climate change plan breaks the organisation into pieces and allows you to identify themes, sectors and the scope your climate policies need to focus on.

We must be aware that climate change touches on every sector, every piece of infrastructure and all aspects of society. And although these plans are often led by climate change policymakers who have the versatility to speak to a variety of these topics, this doesn't create organisational “buy-in”. To do this you need topic experts and practitioners in your project management teams to ensure the plan reflects and responds to the current procedures of each major function within your organisation or even partnership agency.  By engaging the experts during the mainstreaming policy process you start to build trust, which you need in order to champion the implementation further down the line.

If you are a climate change policymaker, you need to ensure you understand and address the key motivations of the different sectors — not everyone is motivated to deal with climate change

Having sifted through many and written a few, I feel the best climate change plans are short and uncomplicated.  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have technical documents backing up your plan, but these technical documents should remain in the background and be leveraged by the sector experts practitioners that are implementing the change. The biggest mistake we have made in climate policy-making to date is that we over complicated things. Too much information makes it difficult for people to grasp the tangible actions that they can contribute.

By making the overarching climate strategies digestible, you are initiating conversations with departments, community groups and agencies that need to be responsible. A simple plan increases the ability to memorise, cite and refer to specific goals, targets or actions. This helps increase understanding and allows you to create the long term “buy-in” allowing you to move into action.

It all adds up

Implementation, however, often fails when it relies only on mainstreamed policies.

Governments have too many policies, processes and people already in place to simply release one policy that overnight magically changes the way we do things. We see this every day with quality mainstream policy documents sitting on shelves, gathering dust. To overcome this, dedicated policies need to be created and leveraged.

Dedicated policies address a specific topic with a specific concern. This may sound simple but actually developing and executing this requires a delicate approach. The main difference when focusing on a specific policy for a specific sector is that you as the staff member in charge of climate change will most likely not be the foremost expert or practitioner.

If you are a climate change policymaker, you need to ensure you understand and address the key motivations of the different sectors — not everyone is motivated to deal with climate change. Instead, you need to find synergies where it can enhance and benefit in other ways, whether it is economically, socially, or even environmentally.

Dedicated climate polices cannot suffice on their own if you are truly going to address climate change, but they do provide specific tangible opportunities for implementation and measuring success.

A new climate in government

To be successful at creating climate change policies as well as establishing a climate-conscious culture, the climate policymaker needs to be able to be agile in order to break down silos that exist in government, by developing tangible mainstream goals that everyone can relate to, and then a dedicated policy approach that caters to the needs of the individual sector.

This multi angled approach can help ensure you gain the support through the transition to a climate-conscious organisational culture in government.

Further reading

Here are three good examples of excellent and illustrative climate plans:

Ajax, ON, Canada

The Ajax Climate Risk & Resilience Plan — an example of a concise overarching climate adaptation strategy. See also their summary of the technical background.

City of London, UK

Zero carbon London: A 1.5ºC compatible plan — an example of a concise overarching climate mitigation strategy.

Durham Region, ON, Canada

Growing Resilience Durham Region Agriculture Sector Climate Adaptation Strategy – 2019- An Addendum to the Durham Community Climate Adaptation Plan (2016_)_ — an example of a sector specific climate change plan.

— Jade Schofield

(Picture credit: Unsplash)