Rachel Dunk (United Kingdom) 1; Gina Cavan (United Kingdom) 1; Jane Mork (United Kingdom) 1
1 - Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester, UK, was the world’s first industrial city and is now striving to be the world’s first climate literate city. As part of its contribution to meeting this aim, Manchester City Council (MCC) has committed to train all staff in climate literacy. While this training programme was initially conceived with a strong focus on climate change mitigation, it has recently been extended to include adaptation as an equally necessary response. During the training, participants develop knowledge and understanding regarding the causes and consequences of climate change, and are empowered to take action (in their personal and professional lives), both in terms of reducing their carbon impacts and in terms of increasing urban resilience to climate change. Knowledge is built through participation in a series of interactive exercises and games, and participants are provided with specific guidance on simple yet significant actions they can take and are asked to pledge their commitment to both mitigation and adaptation actions. Here the adaptation actions focus on the potential of garden space, which accounts for around 20% of urban land area, to enhance resilience to climate change hazards such as flooding and heat waves.
This paper presents an overview and evaluation of the climate literacy training, considering the impact of training on participants understanding of climate change, their ability to identify actions to reduce their carbon impact and enhance urban resilience, and the types of actions they commit to undertake. Based on our findings, we make a number of recommendations for the design and delivery of climate literacy training, particularly with respect to increasing the likely effectiveness of such interventions.