Communities around the world are experiencing the impacts of our changing climate. Unfortunately, many of them are not ready. Different impacts are experienced across the globe – in rural Appalachian towns in the U.S., coastal cities in Colombia, and mountain villages in Nepal. Climate change affects our food, our jobs, and our health.
Some cities are taking action and building resilience, others lack the organization, information, and policies to move forward. Often communities in areas hardest hit are those least equipped to lead their own way forward. Efforts to address climate change cannot focus on well-resourced cities alone. All communities need to develop “climate readiness” to drive local action and solutions.
Climate Communities International (CCI) was founded on the importance of building local opportunities to lead climate change solutions. A rapid global climate change response must leverage the diverse talent and unique positioning of local populations—especially young people. Locally-driven leadership requires the development of new opportunities in these communities. CCI focuses on creating opportunities through market mechanisms that support deployment of technology and solutions that aid communities in mitigating and adapting to climate change. CCI also focuses on international connections with peers and experts to create networks that empower communities with the information they need to lead solutions.
CCI builds Climate Readiness in three ways: (1) collaborating directly with communities to map their climate impacts, local priorities, and resources to identify and take action on near-term opportunities; (2) working directly with developers, implementers and investors to map technologies and solutions to required market conditions for success, and matching to community partners; and (3) building peer and expert global networks to establish direct channels of communication for sharing and collaboration.
