Co-Benefits of Climate Action: Two Practical Methods for Action | Futureproofed
Ensuring a prosperous and safe future for everyone is the main reason to take climate action. Doesn’t sound like a good reason? Climate action allows us to re-think our cities and make them more liveable. Co-benefits of city climate action could mean better air quality, more comfortable homes, and more local jobs. These reasons are likely to sound appealing to both politicians and citizens.
Climate action is confused as a burden 🌍
For those that think short-term, climate action is an expensive burden. It’s regarded as an unnecessary budget expense to invest in a city’s massive transformation that is needed to ensure a prosperous future.
Even when cities are convinced of the need for climate action, reaching to certain sectors of the population is hard. How can a citizen who struggles to pay their monthly bills be moved for the climate?
But climate action is not only about a prosperous future.
In many ways, climate action is already cheaper when compared to inaction. For many countries in the world, renewable energy is the cheapest source of a new baseload. Affordable renewable energy is appealing to economically vulnerable people in our cities. For them, climate action can mean more comfortable and inexpensive housing.
Co-benefits can help to sell climate action 🙌
Climate action comes with many win-win opportunities. For example, renewable energy reduces emissions but also reduces mortality rates from air pollution. It also boosts energy independence. We call these win-win situations or co-benefits.
In a recent study, cities that cited the co-benefits of their climate ambitions were found to have 2.5 times more actions than cities that don’t disclose the co-benefits.
Showing co-benefits can pay off.
How can your city use co-benefits to engage citizens and ‘sell’ more climate actions?
Originally published at https://blog.futureproofed.com.
