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To find climate change solutions, you can use your own expertise about the subject, you can ask colleagues for ideas, and you can perform an Internet search. Chances are very likely that other people have had the same challenge that you are facing, and will have posted their solutions online.
Mr. Magee is CSDi’s Executive Director and the author of A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation, Routledge, Oxford, England.
Good morning. Last week we developed an outline of our community’s top-priority climate challenges.
This week, we’re going to look for climate change solutions for those challenges. Each climate solution will be a program made up of several step-by-step activities.
To find potential climate change solutions, you can use your own expertise about the subject, you can ask colleagues for ideas, and you can perform an Internet search. Chances are very likely that other people have had the same challenge that you are facing, and will have posted their climate change solutions online.
For instance, my course example includes the challenge that “heatwaves are causing a loss of tourism dollars for businesses.’ Over the past few years, I’ve seen articles about urban street tree programs for the purpose of reducing urban heat. So, I started my search there.
I found one article about a very large and sophisticated program in Sydney, Australia. But for my example town of Wilcox, I needed a fairly simple, low-cost program that could be done largely with volunteer labor.
So I searched the Internet for community-based street tree programs and found three articles about programs that would be approachable by a small town the size of Wilcox. I also discovered that the town of Tucson (which is only an hour away) has a booklet called the ‘Tucson Downtown Street Tree Plan.’
It provides an introduction to how to develop a street tree plan, it lists recommendations for types of trees, and it provides a step-by-step approach to planting and maintaining street trees. This was a real find because the kinds of trees that they have chosen would be perfect for Wilcox since the two towns are in exactly the same environment. So now I had the first program for my climate action plan: a ‘Street Tree Program to Reduce Urban Heat.’
Next I needed to put together a step-by-step list of activities. I went to this course’s student resource page and opened up the document ‘50 Programs and Activities for Successful Projects’ to get an idea not only for activities, but also of how to organize them into a step-by-step project. I found a forestry program that had some similarities to my street tree idea and was well organized into a nice, neat project.
So I copy/pasted that into my outline and then edited it to represent the street tree program. Then I went through the Tucson tree manual and found several other activities that seemed important, and added those into the list of activities as well.
Since Willcox will need to rely on quite a bit of volunteer labor because of budget constraints, an activity at the very beginning is about surveying community members about their knowledge and interest in street trees. This is good; it will begin the process of their buying into the program and possibly volunteering when we need them.
So now it’s your turn! You can save a lot of time if you copy and paste my example programs, or programs from the 50 programs sheet into your outline. Then simply edit them to match your program idea. Good luck! And I look forward to seeing your good work.
Good morning. Last week we developed an outline of our community’s top-priority climate challenges.
This week, we’re going to look for climate change solutions for those challenges. Each solution will be a program made up of several step-by-step activities.
To find potential climate change solutions, you can use your own expertise about the subject, you can ask colleagues for ideas, and you can perform an Internet search. Chances are very likely that other people have had the same challenge that you are facing, and will have posted their solutions to climate change online.
For instance, my course example includes the challenge that “heatwaves are causing a loss of tourism dollars for businesses.’ Over the past few years, I’ve seen articles about urban street tree programs for the purpose of reducing urban heat. So, I started my search there.
I found one article about a very large and sophisticated program in Sydney, Australia. But for my example town of Wilcox, I needed a fairly simple, low-cost program that could be done largely with volunteer labor.
So I searched the Internet for community-based street tree programs and found three articles about programs that would be approachable by a small town the size of Wilcox. I also discovered that the town of Tucson (which is only an hour away) has a booklet called the ‘Tucson Downtown Street Tree Plan.’
It provides an introduction to how to develop a street tree plan, it lists recommendations for types of trees, and it provides a step-by-step approach to planting and maintaining street trees. This was a real find because the kinds of trees that they have chosen would be perfect for Wilcox since the two towns are in exactly the same environment. So now I had the first program for my climate action plan: a ‘Street Tree Program to Reduce Urban Heat.’
Next I needed to put together a step-by-step list of activities. I went to this course’s student resource page and opened up the document ‘50 Programs and Activities for Successful Projects’ to get an idea not only for activities, but also of how to organize them into a step-by-step project. I found a forestry program that had some similarities to my street tree idea and was well organized into a nice, neat project.
So I copy/pasted that into my outline and then edited it to represent the street tree program. Then I went through the Tucson tree manual and found several other activities that seemed important, and added those into the list of activities as well.
Since Willcox will need to rely on quite a bit of volunteer labor because of budget constraints, an activity at the very beginning is about surveying community members about their knowledge and interest in street trees. This is good; it will begin the process of their buying into the program and possibly volunteering when we need them.
So now it’s your turn! You can save a lot of time if you copy and paste my example programs, or programs from the 50 programs sheet into your outline. Then simply edit them to match your program idea. Good luck! And I look forward to seeing your good work.
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