Co-Creating Climate Justice Interventions

Climate change poses complex social risks that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. This guide explores how to integrate social development considerations into climate action, ensuring that climate strategies are inclusive, equitable, and responsive to community needs. It provides guidance for aligning climate responses with poverty reduction, social justice, and long-term development goals. The guide highlights essential aspects for mainstreaming social development into climate-related interventions: – The interlinkages between climate vulnerability, inequality, and social exclusion – Methods for assessing social impacts of climate change and related policies – Frameworks for designing socially inclusive climate adaptation and mitigation strategies – Tools for engaging marginalized groups and enhancing their participation in decision-making – Case examples where social development goals strengthened climate resilience – Institutional measures to embed social analysis into climate finance and project design – Recommendations to ensure that climate action supports broader human development objectives It emphasizes that climate policies must go beyond technical solutions and address underlying social structures. The guide calls for participatory, pro-poor, and gender-responsive approaches to avoid reinforcing existing inequalities. When social dimensions are central to climate planning, interventions become more legitimate, effective, and sustainable in the face of rising environmental challenges.

🌿 Immense gratitude to Dr Renuka Thakore Representing Global Communities Creative Women Platform Sustainability Award Renuka for inviting me to open the powerful workshop and delivering my Message : “Climate, Culture, and Care: Re-imagining Sustainability Through Indigenous Eyes” 🙏 Early in my sustainability journey, I mistakenly treated ecosystems and societies as separate. But in the Amazon—and globally—forest and culture are inseparable. 🌳👥 Every language, ritual, and seed exchange holds the key to resilience. Indigenous communities are turning diversity into strength, showing us what true climate adaptation looks like. So how can we, as researchers and citizens of a warming planet, support and learn from this brilliance? 🔹 1. Listen Before We Handle Our datasets must be multicultural and multilingual! 📡 Oral histories, sacred maps, and flood memories should be treated as data with a heartbeat—not just anecdotes. Satellite images gain precision when cross-checked with community knowledge. 🗣️🌍 🔹 2. Co-Create Solutions, Not Just Transfer Technology Indigenous fire rituals, plant medicine, and communal governance are ready-made climate strategies. They should be integrated with AI and tech in equal partnership, not through extraction. 🤝💡 🔹 3. Safeguard the Right to Be Different Land rights and language rights are climate policies. 🛡️ Protecting cultural sovereignty keeps communities rooted and forests standing. Without it, we risk losing both carbon sinks and futures. 🔹 4. Ensure Plural Participation Every project should ask: how many perspectives shaped this plan? How many local leaders hold real decision-making power? Diverse teams innovate up to 35% faster—imagine that power in climate action. 🌎💬 Let us center CARE—for Earth, for each other, and for diverse ways of knowing. May every dialogue deepen our understanding and fuel a future where climate, culture, and care thrive together. 🌱❤️ #IndigenousKnowledge #ClimateJustice #DiversityIsResilience #Amazon #Sustainability #CultureAndCare #PluralParticipation #ClimateAction

Too often, we give the status quo more credit than it deserves, especially when it comes to traditional methods of community engagement. In our collective conversations, we frequently express the need for fresh perspectives to tackle today’s challenges, particularly in the face of the climate crisis. Yet, these musings often remain unacted upon, leaving us unprepared to meet the scale and severity of the issues at hand. As we know, promoting collaborative solutions is not just beneficial, it's essential. Equitable community/stakeholder engagement is about co-creating solutions with those we aim to serve. This means actively listening, involving, and empowering community members to take part and lead in the decision-making process. This reflects the procedural dimensions of environmental justice. A core part of the work that Jake Barnet, and I are leading in our "Electrivive" initiative, in partnership with Raye E.'s Flipp Inc NABCEP: North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners program exemplifies this approach. We engage with incarcerated individuals to hear their perspectives and experiences within the justice system. By providing education and technical information on building decarbonization and energy efficiency-related workforce pathways, we are not only offering them knowledge to contribute to the green economy but also sharing relevant IRA/BIL policy agendas that we then discuss. This featured photo was taken at Henrico Co. Jail East in late June- at the peak of a conversation centered on WAP and HER/HEAR dollars to support LMI households in the energy transition. Consider the transformative impact of the #ParticipatoryBudgeting initiative, which began in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989. This approach revolutionized public health engagement by allowing community members to directly decide how to allocate a portion of the public budget. It not only increased transparency and trust but also ensured that resources were directed to areas of greatest need, resulting in more effective and equitable health outcomes. History provides us with valuable lessons. In the 19th century, the prevailing belief was that diseases were caused by "miasma" or bad air. This misconception persisted until scientists like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch introduced the Germ Theory of Disease, revealing that microorganisms were the true culprits. This paradigm shift revolutionized medicine, leading to advancements in sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics, fundamentally changing our approach to public health. Breaking free from the constraints of the status quo enables us, across nations, to build stronger, more resilient communities. We become better equipped to tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow when we dare to innovate and act on our insights. How have you or an organization you know innovated your approach to community engagement? I would love to hear your experiences and insights! #CommunityEngagement

This policy brief advocates for participatory, decentralised, and democratic #earlywarningsystems (EWS) that engage diverse state and non-state actors, including community groups, NGOs, and regional bodies. By fostering co-governance, it aims to address socio-cultural dynamics and empower marginalised communities, enhancing resilience, diversity, and inclusion. Balancing ambition with caution, it emphasizes actions to ensure sustainable, context-sensitive EWS. Building EWS on existing formal and informal #linkages is critical. Forecasting impacts is only the beginning—#dissemination and motivating #action are key challenges. Effective early warnings require contextualizing hazards and impacts to align with stakeholders' needs and capacities. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies - IFRC