Understanding Community Behaviour on Climate Mitigation and Blueprint for Action

This project will develop a framework for community action for climate mitigation. This is an interdisciplinary research project drawing on social scientific, climate mitigation technology, and policy perspectives. While scientific knowledge indicates that we need to act now in response to climate change, it is clear that the reaction at the institutional, community, and individual levels within Ireland and elsewhere has not been adequate to meet the challenge. This project focuses on community response and on the gap between information and knowledge, and climate action. The project will research the following: the influence of psychology and behaviour; the potential for innovative and creative methods; the role of technology, grants and incentives, taxes and punitive measures; the identification of benefits and barriers and the part to be played by government, statutory and voluntary agencies and communication systems within an Irish context. The research comprises i) extensive literature review ii) engagement with and learning from a range of community initiatives on climate action and other topics (tidy towns, transition towns, etc.) iii) development of a framework for engaging with, enabling, and facilitating community action on climate action and iv) consultation on this framework via a stakeholder event with community projects and state agencies.