How to Find Evidence-Based Climate Solutions That Work

Step 4 of The Climate Action Plan Interactive Workshop

Watch 3 Minute Video: Evidence-Based Climate Solutions

This week you’re going to verify that the programs and activities you chose for your Climate Action Plan will actually work to solve the climate change challenges. You will do a bit of research to see if any scientific studies have been done showing evidence of the effectiveness of your proposed climate adaptation program.

Mr. Magee is CSDi’s Executive Director and the author of A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation, Routledge, Oxford, England.

Have your Climate Change Programs Shown Climate Evidence of Working

Good morning. Last week you researched programs and activities that would provide solutions to your community’s climate challenges and added them to your project outline.

This week you’re going to verify that the programs and activities you chose will actually work to solve the climate change challenges.

Why?

What if you are a mother in a small town and your children are suffering from recurring heat waves? A member of a US agency comes to town with a plan to help end your children’s suffering. Wouldn’t you want their plan to work?

Suppose that you work for a nonprofit or a local government. You’re hoping to help community members adapt to more frequent extreme weather events. Wouldn’t you want to be successful?

Today it is acknowledged that sometimes organizations develop projects by copying what other organizations are doing without checking to see if the project is working.

Evidence Based Solutions

There is an extraordinarily simple solution to this—and that is to do a bit of research to see if any scientific studies have been done showing evidence of the effectiveness of a proposed climate adaptation program.

You’re probably proud of the climate programs that you developed last week—and if you’re anything like me—you’ve probably fallen in love with your idea. But take a little time to research whether there is a basis in scientific evidence that your programs are going to work in your specific situation.

Peer-reviewed Scientific Papers

Google is very powerful. I find using plain English in Google works well. Google can point you to peer-reviewed scientific papers that are freely downloadable online. So, for example, I Googled, “Is there evidence that street trees can reduce urban heat?” This brought forth a gold mine of information and helped me to understand that if done properly, that yes, street tree programs work for reducing urban heat.

Google also has a search engine called Google Scholar, which is designed to look for nothing but peer-reviewed scientific papers.

These papers will give you an abstract or executive summary, which will quickly tell you whether the program worked to solve the challenge.

But what if you find evidence that your proposed activity doesn’t work? Analyze if the problem can be corrected with a minor modification to your activities. If not, search for new activities that will work that you hadn’t discovered yet. It’s better to find out that something isn’t going to work at this early stage than after you’ve launched a project that that expended resources and proved disappointing to the community.

Good luck! I look forward to seeing your good work. Please move on to assignment four.