Community-Based Climate Change Solutions

Overview

Climate change will have tremendous impacts on every human community across the globe. However, because of the context of both how climate is changing and how communities are organized and function, it can be disastrous to apply the same solutions across the board. This course will teach you the basic principles needed to identify the dynamics and needs of each community, build on its strengths, and adopt best practices and practical frameworks for adapting climate change solutions to local contexts. You’ll learn tools and approaches to put these principles into practice across different community settings, regardless of your level of prior experience. This course is intended for professionals who have been tasked with implementing climate change solutions at the community level, whether in urban or rural areas or in industrialized or developing countries. Upon completion of the course, you will be able to effectively select and adapt climate change solutions to best match the specific social and environmental context of each community, and to engage community members in implementing sustainable solutions that produce positive, equitable outcomes. This course requires no previous knowledge of climate change solutions or of community engagement, and people with this knowledge will also benefit from the course.

Syllabus

Principles of Community-Based Solutions

In this module, you will explore the rationale for working at the community level for climate change solutions and the basic principles for building effective and equitable approaches for doing so. You will apply what you have learned by reflecting on your own experience of “community” and by responding to a series of questions about basic principles of community climate solutions and how they manifest in a case study.

Understanding Community Dynamics

In this module, you will explore various theories about how communities work, what motivates them to come together to confront and find collective solutions to environmental and social problems, and the barriers that can keep them from doing so. You will apply what you have learned by exploring a number of case studies that illustrate these theories through examples from communities around the world and completing a quiz at the end of the module to assess your comprehension.

Creating Climate Change Solutions with Communities

In this module you will explore the rationale for including the communities impacted by climate change in envisioning and enacting solutions and some of the methods you can employ for doing so. You will apply what you have learned by exploring a number of case studies that illustrate the power and potential pitfalls of these methods through examples from communities around the world and by completing a quiz at the end of the module to assess your comprehension.

Raising Awareness and Motivating Change

In this module, you will explore community organizing strategies for defining and motivating collective action and techniques for effectively communicating and changing behavior to enact your movement’s climate change solutions. You will apply what you have learned by reviewing concrete examples and planning how you might use these organizing and messaging techniques to advance climate action where you live.