Researchers at the McCaughey Centre have recently completed a report commissioned by the Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development entitled Climate Change and Community Engagement: Benefits, Challenges and Strategies.
The report was prepared by Professor John Wiseman, Lara Williamson, and Jess Fritze and was based on a series of roundtable discussions with representatives of state and local governments and community and environment-focused non-government organisations, in collaboration with the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS) and the Council on the Ageing Victoria (COTA Victoria). Roundtable participants discussed the ways environmental advocates are engaging the communities they work in, helping to inspire action on climate change.
The project aimed to gain insights about the role of community engagement in addressing climate change, and is part of a larger program of work at the McCaughey Centre aimed at addressing the impacts of climate change on community wellbeing.
The key message to emerge from the report lay in the need to balance the ‘sense of fear and despair that comes from confronting the full extent of the climate crisis, with a sense of empowerment’, as Climate Change and Social Justice Research Fellow Taegen Edwards puts it. Engaging communities on climate change issues can help to lessen apathy and hopelessness, by encouraging the belief that something can be done, and that we can all make a difference.
The report was recently launched at the Communities in a Changing Climate forum, organised by VCOSS and the McCaughey Centre. The Minister for Energy and Resources and Community Development, Peter Batchelor, launched the report. Further detail on this event will be posted soon, including links to presentations from the day.
The report is available here.
More information about Climate Change and Community Engagement can be found on the McCaughey Centre’s climate change website.