How to engage stakeholders for powerful and inclusive climate action planning

Climate action planning must be an inclusive, collaborative process with input from a diverse stakeholder network, engaging groups with an interest in or influence on climate action. This includes residents – especially those adversely impacted by climate change and climate actions – as well as civil-society groups, private companies, business associations, financial institutions, delivery partners, universities and other experts, other levels of government, city government agencies and departments. An inclusive, collaborative process for climate action planning is as important as the climate action plan (CAP) itself, as it builds widespread community and political support, creates confidence that encourages action and investment, fosters credibility and strengthens the resulting plan.

This article sets out steps, approaches and tools to help cities design and deliver an inclusive, equitable and strategic engagement strategy for the climate action planning process. Ultimately, this will help to ensure the city delivers an inclusive, equitable and successful CAP. The steps can apply to the city’s engagement strategy for the planning process as a whole and to strategies for specific elements of the planning process – particularly vision setting, needs assessment and risk assessment, identification of mitigation and adaptation strategies, the prioritisation of CAP actions and the monitoring and evaluation of whether actions are achieving their objectives.

Identify the objective(s) for engagement

As with any engagement process, the objectives for engagement during climate action planning should be aligned with the wider vision for the CAP and informed by any equity, inclusivity and engagement-related policies identified in the strategic appraisal, at the start of the process, as well as the capacity of the team responsible for carrying out the engagement – usually, but not necessarily, the CAP team. Engagement objectives for the whole climate action planning process may focus on achieving social and environmental justice, for example, while engagement objectives for the action prioritisation phase may focus on identifying realistic pathways for delivering ambitious actions and building CAP buy-in. The engagement objectives should include commitments to transparency, accessibility and inclusivity throughout, particularly for priority groups.

Translate the objectives into targets to guide the engagement strategy and facilitate its monitoring and evaluation. The outcome-mapping and self-assessment tools in the ‘Vision Setting’ chapter of the Inclusive Community Engagement Playbook can help in this process.

Learn more about these steps in the Inclusive Community Engagement Playbook

The Playbook is a guide to engaging stakeholders in climate action planning and throughout the implementation of climate actions. It provides a wide range of tools to support the development of an engagement strategy and gives examples of cities that have used them. We have highlighted many of the most relevant tools for climate action planning in this article.

Identify and understand the priority stakeholders

Building on the brainstorming of stakeholders conducted as part of the strategic appraisal, conduct a detailed stakeholder mapping to identify priority stakeholders, what their interest or influence on climate action planning may be, and how to effectively engage them. This information will guide the design of the engagement strategy for the climate action planning process as a whole and for each step in the process.

Priority stakeholders in climate action planning should include groups that are:

• Most impacted by climate change, climate actions and inequities. Identification of these groups should be informed by the needs assessment – any stakeholder mapping undertaken before the needs assessment is completed should be updated to reflect insights from this assessment. The city should also identify any groups which have been excluded from the city’s past engagement processes. The groups most impacted will often include, but are not limited to, children and youth, women, people with disabilities, informal communities (workers and residents), racial and ethnic minorities, elderly people, and immigrant and transient communities, as well as workers in highly polluting industries where change most needs to be made. As some of these groups may be relatively hard to reach, the city should seek to understand factors that influence the ability of each group to engage.
• Critical to the implementation of climate actions and to achieving change at scale. The city’s powers over different assets or functions – including the degree of city ownership or operational control and the city’s ability to set and enforce policy – will influence how other stakeholders, such as private companies or higher levels of government, need to be engaged in climate action planning. The involvement and buy-in of those stakeholders are crucial to designing effective climate actions and to unlocking climate actions that lie beyond the direct control of the city government. To deliver many of the most impactful climate actions, cities must tap into the full range of formal powers as well as soft powers to influence and collaborate with external stakeholders.
• Powerful and influential. These included powerful, influential individuals and groups that are likely to be supportive of the city’s climate action, help raise ambition and bring other actors on board, as well as those likely to oppose it.

The ‘Mapping and Analysing’ chapter of the Playbook provides a selection of tools that cities can use to identify priority groups, such as:

• Representation sampling, which compares the city’s demographics with past engagement data.
• An interest and influence matrix, which plots needs and interests against power and influence.
• Powers analysis, which can help to explain power dynamics and imbalances among stakeholders and how they might influence the climate action planning process.

Design and implement the engagement process

Building on the city’s existing engagement strategy and practices, and the knowledge gained from stakeholder mapping, develop an engagement plan that uses a mix of channels and methods to reach a wide and diverse set of stakeholders. The plan should invite engagement at an appropriate level for each group. From the lowest to highest levels of engagement, this means informing, consulting, involving, collaborating or co-designing with stakeholders. The ‘Designing and Implementing’ chapter of the Playbook sets out approaches that support different levels of city-led engagement.

• In-depth engagement – involve, collaborate and co-design. Priority groups should be integrated into the city’s climate action planning through a continuous, long-term engagement process that begins early and continues throughout implementation. Approaches to this deeper engagement include small group discussions, co-mapping workshops, citizen assemblies, youth fora, participatory budgets, one-to-one interviews or meetings, and creative methods involving arts and culture. Select approaches that are appropriate for different priority stakeholders and that are within the coordinating team’s capacity to deliver. Follow the links for advice on engaging children, youth, older people and unions. How cities can work with businesses to achieve climate goals provides advice on collaborating with private partners, and this guide digs deeper into developing city-business climate alliances.
• Lighter engagement – inform and consult. Engage lower-priority stakeholder groups and the wider public to understand views and attitudes and to build trust and transparency. Approaches include surveys, consultations, public events or summits. The Public Consultation Guide provides more information on the stages of this process and approaches cities can use.

Consider working with external organisations with strong convening power and/or facilitation expertise to support the planning and delivery of the engagement strategy. Cape Town, for example, found value in working with a provincial non-profit, the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership, to support engagement with external partners,¹ while Climate Action Kansas City partnered with a regional planning organisation to run a climate action planning process with elected officials alongside non-profit, agency and business leaders and researchers.

The stakeholder engagement strategy should include a communication plan to inform stakeholders about the purpose of each engagement activity, the benefits for participants and how their input will be used. It should also include feedback mechanisms to enable evaluation and adjustment.

Paris received over 50,000 responses to a public consultation while developing the Plan Climat 2024-2030, the city’s fourth CAP, which also expands the role of the 70,000+ Volontaire de Paris (Paris Volunteers) to implement many of the community actions outlined in the strategy. For the first time, the Plan Climat 2024-2030 was created in cooperation with the leaders of all of Paris’ arrondissements – the 20 administrative districts of the city.

In 2018, Rio de Janeiro launched Participa.Rio, a participatory platform that invites residents to participate in the design of Rio’s Sustainable Development Plan and aims to create a culture of participation in the city. Consultation was organised in ‘waves’ for each stage of the plan’s development and the platform shares interim results by neighbourhood, gender and age.

Seattle’s Duwamish Valley Resilience District advisory group engages and convenes residents to inform climate adaptation and mitigation efforts in this area of the city, delivering on actions identified in the City-community co-created Duwamish Valley Action Plan released in 2018. The advisory group is supported by professional facilitators, and participants received training from experts to ensure they had shared language and sufficient knowledge about issues including sea level rise adaptation approaches, financing and funding options, and racial equity considerations.

Barcelona’s Climate Plan 2018–2030 was created through participatory processes, including a working group of over 140 organisations and a network of residents. Learn more about the process in Inclusive climate action in practice: How to jointly tackle climate change and inequality, where Barcelona’s planning is one of seven case studies.

Manchester’s Five-Year Environment Implementation Plan 2019–2024 was co-created in two years through extensive citizen engagement, including listening events and online surveys, as well as two Green Summits that invited broad engagement and feedback on the city’s proposed carbon target and greenhouse gas reduction pathways.

Evaluate and upgrade the engagement process to deliver better outcomes next time

Using the targets and feedback processes established earlier, assess the degree to which the engagement achieved what it set out to achieve. This should be part of the wider monitoring, evaluation and reporting system for the CAP.

Evaluating engagement efforts at each stage of climate action planning will help to maximise the success of engagement in later phases. Equally, engagement during the action planning process provides a foundation for engagement during CAP implementation, as well as in future updates to the city’s CAP. Documenting the lessons learnt will help to deliver better outcomes later.

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