Download Engagement of and support to the third sector to take action

Engagement of and support to the third sector to take action on
climate change
1. Scope of paper
This paper provides a brief analysis of the engagement of and the support available
in Wales for the third sector to take action on climate change, in particular the
support for non-engaged, non-environmental organisations. The aim of this analysis
is to inform the Commission about WCVA’s experience in this area1, the issues
identified and recommendations for next steps.
WCVA asks the Commission to consider the issues and support further analysis2 to
feed into the Climate Change Commission’s Annual Report.
2. Third sector and climate change
There is huge potential for the third sector to tackle climate change, both in the size of
the sector and its breadth in areas of interest. The variety of the third sector ranges
from local community groups active in climate change e.g. Transition groups, groups
of volunteers supporting energy reduction, through to national organisations and
networks interested in areas such as children’s rights (see Annex A for details of third
sector). Categorisation can also be made as “communities of interest” (organisations
acting on a particular area of interest, for example older peoples’ welfare) and
“communities of place” (organisations working with a place based focus e.g. CVCs,
development trusts, Communities 1st , Community Hubs).
The scale of challenge of climate change requires that all areas of the third sector are
all engaged and supported to take action, not just environmental organisations
working in their local area. It is particularly important that the organisations which
support the groups most vulnerable to climate change are engaged in order to help
facilitate a just transition to a low carbon Wales and ensure that the already
disadvantaged are not disproportionately impacted.
Areas of action where it can have considerable impact include:

Develop the infrastructure and social capitol that supports behaviour change and
sustainable living

As trusted intermediaries support behaviour change in way that clearly links to the
issues the beneficiaries and communities already care about
includes work with Climate Change Leadership Group, events held across Wales, evidence/research
reports, work with networks and engagement with other key stakeholders
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Further analysis could include Round Table Discussion with key stakeholders to be held in
November supported by Commissioner and Commission secretariat; additional mapping of support
provided by agencies across Wales
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Protect or support it’s beneficiaries to cope with the changing weather patterns
and extreme events
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Campaign and advocate for a more sustainable future, including consideration of
social justice issues within policy and support

Reduce organisational and community carbon footprint contributing to Wales 3%
reduction target
3. Scale of action in third sector
Environmental organisations in the third sector are already doing a lot of work to
tackle the impacts of climate change, mitigating future damage and adapting to the
future. There are however, no comprehensive figures on the scale of this activity in
Wales. WCVA figures identify 33,087 organisations, branches or groups in the third
sector (July 2012). Of these, 1,637 are classed as having an interest in the
environment (biodiversity, conservation, sustainable development). This is
approximately 4% of the third sector. This highlights the large scale of potential
activity on climate change within the third sector for non-engaged, non-environmental
organisations.
It is not clear how from our categorisation many of these environmental organisations
are taking action on climate change or how many non-environmental organisations
are also taking action. WCVA is unable to identify alternative sources of this
information although there are pockets which hold relevant information. For example,
local infrastructure organisations (CVCs), national resources (Welsh Government
/Environment Wales/Ground Work/Cynnal) and projects (Pathfinders). There are also
some local projects which have already mapped activities which offer an insight to
what could be achieved. E.g. Cardiff Transition’s Sustainable Cardiff map
http://cardifftransition.com/mapping
Recommendation
Work with agencies to identify the scale of action across the third sector via collating
existing sources of information and identifying where further data collection is
required.
4. Support for action on climate change
The third sector is unlikely to treat climate change as a priority without intervention.
Climate change is an issue too many for most non environmental organisations
therefore they need to be lead and supported to take action if they are to be
successfully mobilised.
Generic support for the third sector to take action can be classified as including:
o information (meaningful and accessible)
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o
o
o
o
o
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capacity building and training
networking
grants/funding
development (tailored, ongoing support development support and
advice that deepens with progression)
voice / influence (local and national decision making and service
delivery)
This range of support needs to be available for the third sector to access at the point
when it’s needed for any given organisation’s particular journey. This should include
non-engaged, non-environmental organisations wanting to know how they can take
first steps to tackling climate change through to environmental organisations
undertaking complex behaviour change projects.
a) Meaningful engagement and support for non-engaged and non-environmental
organisations
Through WCVA’s Climate Change Leadership Group3 and work with our
stakeholders, we have identified that:

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
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There is no clear route for developing action on climate change. The services
available are viewed as a patchwork of differential support rather than an
easily accessible and progressive pathway which is meaningful to the users.
There is no direct, easily accessible support for larger non environmental third
sector organisations and networks wanting to reduce their carbon footprint
understand impacts on their beneficiaries and integrate climate change into
their work programmes.
The groups most vulnerable to climate change are often unaware of the
impact of climate change and support the support available.
The majority of the engagement and support appears to be for environmental,
place based organisations already taking action on climate change.
Research by the Green Alliance, ‘New Times New Connections’ identified that
for those third sector organisations that are interested in climate change, many are at
the very initial stages of understanding what climate change means for them and
finding ways to support that process is vital. This needs to be meaningful
engagement and support -not just greening their approach (reducing carbon) but
also identifying the intrinsic links between their motivations for doing so and their
core work.
WCVA established a third sector leadership group on climate change in 2009 to involve
organisations from the across the sector in addressing the implications of climate change within their
organisations. A key aim was to focus on the engagement of the “non –environmental” third sector to
identify what works and how to further support the sector to engage with climate change.
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Their identified success factors for meaningful engagement and action by third sector
on climate change are:
:
The research suggests that umbrella organisations are ideally placed to jump start
the process of organisations understanding the relevance of climate change to their
work. They can make the links between climate change and core missions and
engage their members with the impacts and opportunities in the context of issues
they care about and in a language that resonates. In light of their potential to cascade
mobilisation, any support for organisations in understanding the relevance of climate
change to different issues should prioritise umbrella bodies.
There are a number of models of meaningful engagement and support that could be
replicated. NCVO Vulnerable Groups project; Cynnal Cyrmu's work with arts and
community councils umbrella organisations; WCVA’s work with the Climate Change
Leadership Group, Equalities and Human Rights Coalition and events on Building
Resilient Communities. The Development Officers of the Supporting Sustainable
Living Grant are currently exploring projects for third sector interest umbrella
organisations and their networks, for example, One Voice Wales.
This is an approach that currently does not appear to receive appropriate and
sustained consideration through any existing agencies in Wales. WCVA has
provided some from its core services4; however this is not sufficient for the scale of
the third sector that could be engaged to take action.
WCVA is using this recommended priority of working with umbrella organisations
through the Third Sector Partnership Council members5 . WCVA want to be able to
Support includes the Climate Change Leadership Group, Information Sheets, Case Studies, events
and training.
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TSPC funding to support networks would include need for organisation to reduce carbon footprint
and disproportionate information on climate change to network. Offer a support package for
umbrella/networks help with this work.
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recommend and direct these umbrella organisations to the support that is needed to
have meaningful engagement and support as detailed above.
Recommendations:
 Discussion with delivery agencies to identify existing support programmes
which could meet the identified success factors for engaging and supporting
the non-environmental third sector.

Consider the development of additional programmes and projects to fill the
gaps.
b) Grants
Grants are an essential aspect of support for organisations to take action on climate
change. There are a range of types of grants that could be offered. These include:
 small amounts of money which are non-prescriptive
 funding which comes with development support
 funding which is prescriptive in its requirements
Current funding for action on climate change from the Welsh Government is the
‘Supporting Sustainable Living Grant’. Our brief analysis suggests that it supports
innovative and valuable behaviour change projects which currently focus on carbon
reduction. It primarily supports third sector organisations that are environmental and
already engaged in climate action or have received considerable development officer
support.
Environment Wales offers a very successful grant and support programme which
does include climate change projects. As it is currently resourced, it does not have the
capacity to support the scale of action required. It also not currently structured to meet
the needs of entire third sector, particular larger non - environmental groups wanting
to take action to explore links with core activities.
It therefore appears as if there is no funding available for organisations who want to
take initial, demand led, capacity building action on climate change. Welsh
Government previously provided the Climate Change Grant which offered this. Its
evaluation report highlights organisations taking a variety of projects, most from nonenvironmental, previously non engaged organisations. It provided a highly cost
effective approach to supporting action on climate change.
Recommendation
 Welsh Government provides a grant scheme which supports demand led,
capacity building action by organisations.
5. Engagement and Behaviour Change
The Climate Change Engagement Strategy is identified in Welsh Government’s
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Annual Report as the key strategy for supporting the third sector to take action on
climate change. The Climate Change Leadership Group has raised some potential
issues about applying this approach the third sector these include:
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The third sector is unlikely to treat climate change as a priority without
intervention. They therefore need to be lead and supported to take action if
they are to be successfully mobilised to change behaviour6.
Climate change engagement is not just about delivering behaviour change.
Behaviour change should be viewed as one of the key outcomes from climate
change engagement, not as the sole methodology for engagement.
The Welsh Government’s Engagement Strategy does not appear to support
areas of engagement and action on climate as detailed above.
Although social marking is empirically well supported as a method of bringing
about specific behavioural changes, there are limitations with this approach to
climate change engagement7
The ‘values’ approach to engagement and behaviour change8 is more
naturally affiliated to the third sector
The Pathfinders research will be important in understanding the capacity and
role of third sector in behaviour change.
Recommendations
 Explore how the programmes in the Engagement Strategy can be applied to
the third sector, for example the segmentation research and the narratives
project.
 Findings of Pathfinders research used to explore the role and capacity of third
sector in engaging communities on behaviour change.
 Evaluation of SSLG to include effective application in third sector.
 Climate Change Commission to look at behaviour change in detail at a future
commission meeting.
CSE (2007) Mobilising individual behaviour change through community initiatives: Lessons for
Climate Change
7 Corner, A., & Randall, A. (2011). Selling climate change? The limitations of social marketing as a
strategy for climate change public engagement. Global Environmental Change, 21(3), 1005-1014.
8 A values approach such as ‘Common Cause: The Case for Working with Values and Frames’
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