How to shift climate action from conferences to communities

Do you want to host LCOY? Read this ⬇️ 🫸 While I love the fact that more young people are engaging in climate action, the "action" often turns into a visibility campaign rather than real impact. While Local Conferences of Youth (LCOYs) are great for climate advocacy, they’re not the only way you can make a difference. ☘️ ➡️ If you want to drive change, the MOST important thing is to be outcome-oriented. Ask yourselves what impacts you would like to see. 👉 Here are some climate action ideas to consider as LCOY alternatives: 🔧 Skill-building workshops Assess what you know and what you can teach. This can be how to conduct research for climate action, best practices for climate communication on social media, etc. Zarra socho, what are you good at and what can you offer? 🏫 Collaborate with schools Get involved with kids, teach them the basics, and organize a fun activity with them. Find an issue that affects them and solve it with them. 🧑🎓 Conduct research-based projects Find out how many people in your community want proper waste management, or what's holding people back from acting on climate change, or how much your community knows about climate change. The most impactful action arguably comes from good research. 🫂 Community engagement Work with communities. Ask them what they struggle with and co-create solutions with them. 🎬 Storytelling & media campaigns Use films, social media, and journalism to highlight important issues. A powerful story can mobilize people faster than a conference ever could. 🧠 Share what you learn Read books, watch documentaries and then share what you learn. It's not cute to teach people about climate change when you don't know that smog isn't an effect of climate change. TLDR: Impact matters more than the event itself. There is no point in gathering people in a room in Islamabad when you haven't planned meaningful outcomes to begin with. --- I know, I've hosted LCOY myself - where do I get off telling y'all not to do it? Here's what we did: ▶️ 3 thematic panel discussions with experienced experts for the purpose of guiding the moderated discussion that fed into Pakistan's output document of LCOY ▶️ 3 thematic moderated discussions for input in the output document ▶️ 17 side events through collaboration with (mostly) youth-led organizations to give them a chance to host an event, share their skills, and for their visibility which included (the ones I remember): - Climate War Simulation by Strafasia - Interactive Nature & Biodiversity Workshop by Movers - Climate Crisis Committee by CarboX - Enroads Climate Change Simulation by ICARE - Green Career Zone by NUST - Measuring GHG Emissions by AKU ▶️ We created a registration system so people could choose what events they wanted to attend ▶️ We created multiple forms to ensure equal participation across gender and area There's so much more but I'm out of space. If you're someone who needs help designing an impactful event, please hit me up any time.

This afternoon, I decided to try something new: local climate action. I googled “Lake Oswego" (where I live) and "Climate Action Plan” and up came our city’s Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (SCAP) and its 2023 Progress Report. I downloaded both and got to work. To make sense of it all, I asked ChatGPT to break it down: What are Lake Oswego's top emissions sources? Transportation (30%) Buildings and electricity use (over 20%) Consumption and waste (the rest) What actions are being taken? EV infrastructure, energy efficiency upgrades and water conservation. How are we doing? 10 actions complete, 33 in progress, 20 not yet started. Biggest gaps? Transportation and building emissions — we’ve got work to do! ⚡ How is Lake Oswego progressing on greening their grid? In 2019, Lake Oswego signed a Power Purchase Agreement through PGE’s Green Future Impact program, helping build Pachwaywit Fields, now Oregon’s largest solar facility. ✅ Today, 55% of city electricity comes directly from this new solar source ✅ All eligible City accounts use 100% renewable electricity 🌱 Long-term goal: 100% of the grid clean by 2035 through Oregon’s Renewable Portfolio Standard BUT...... The Climate Action Plan was written in 2017, leveraging 2012 data. Since then, the world, and the risks, have changed. For example, the plan's resilience section only addresses wildfire smoke, not: grid vulnerability, extreme heat, winter storm risk (like what we saw in early 2024). So I’m making it a goal to engage with the city and community on updating the SCAP and filling gaps, especially to strengthen our climate resilience. Next up? I’m joining others who care, because individual action is powerful, but collective action is how we shift systems: ✅ Planning to attend a Lake Oswego Sustainability Network meeting ✅ Blocking time for the Lake Oswego Sustainability Advisory Board meeting on August 15 There! I did it, and you can too. 🧭 Want to try? Google your city + “climate action plan.” See what’s already happening, where the gaps are, and how to get those gaps filled. Research the grid mix and reliability where you live, and what your city is doing about it. Then find people you can engage with to make change. Let’s share what we find and build a groundswell from the ground up. #LocalClimateAction #Sustainability #ClimateResilience #CommunityPower #ElectrifyEverything #CollectiveAction #GreenTheGrid #CivicEngagement

🌍 Community-Based Approaches to Climate Resilience 🌱 When it comes to climate resilience, communities are not just beneficiaries—they are agents of change. Top-down strategies alone are rarely enough. Sustainable climate action requires solutions that are locally led, context-specific, and inclusive. Here’s why community-based approaches matter: 🔹 Local Knowledge & Ownership Communities understand their environment better than anyone else. By integrating indigenous knowledge with scientific evidence, resilience plans become both practical and sustainable. 🔹 Inclusive & Equitable When women, youth, and marginalized groups are actively engaged, solutions are more just and representative of everyone’s needs. 🔹 Scalable & Replicable Small, community-driven innovations—like early warning systems, climate-smart agriculture, or water conservation—can be adapted and scaled across regions. 🔹 Stronger Social Fabric Resilience is not just about infrastructure; it’s about solidarity. Community participation strengthens trust, cooperation, and collective action. 💡 Building climate resilience with communities, not just for them, is the way forward. 👉 What community-led climate initiatives have inspired you the most? #ClimateResilience #CommunityDevelopment #Sustainability #ClimateAction #Adaptation

It is often said that local communities do not understand how climate change or environmental realities affect them. But this notion is far from true. The real issue is the disconnect – inadequate investment in local human capital, disrupted livelihoods, and the lack of proper resilience approaches to support frontline and coastal communities to thrive, especially where government support is limited or non-existent. We become so fixated on our own definitions of what the adverse impacts of climate change or environmental degradation should look like at their level, and the solutions we invent, that we forget this: 🍃 Local, rural, and indigenous communities who live these realities daily have a major role to play in how we define and create solutions to achieve Goal 14 and other Sustainable Development Goals. Communities may not describe how climate change affects them in our scientific terms, but here’s what I have discovered over the past five years, mobilising communities for climate and policy action: 💡Communities often describe how climate and environmental changes affect them better than we assume. 💡They build resilience even where education or technological aids are limited or non-existent. 💡Backing local knowledge with technology protects traditional wisdom while creating innovative solutions that merge tradition and modern technology for climate and ocean challenges. 💡 Lastly, co-designing solutions with communities is key to sustaining and scaling impact. This ensures policies are deeply rooted to serve not just minorities, but the majority, particularly those in the informal sector with no social security, who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods. Whether you are an environmentalist or not, keep this in mind: 🍃 It is not enough for our solutions, policies, or innovations to serve minorities. True impact lies in ensuring they serve the majority, enabling people to live with dignity. And one way to achieve this is through: 💡Inclusion: ensuring communities have a seat at the table; and 💡 Integration: ensuring their wisdom, practices, and priorities shape the table itself. I hope this helps #abimbolaabikoye #communityresilience #frontlinevoices #sustainability #UNSDGs