After being introduced to multiple frameworks to help lead climate action that ranged from growth through self-reflection, using goal setting, risk assessment, focus on causality and tipping points, and climate knowledge brokering there was one in particular that stood out to me. Climate action brokerage, the concept of making climate-based information required to make informed decisions available to changemakers (weADAPT, 2024) at all levels resonated deeply with me. The reasoning for this resonance stems from my experience as part of two collectives, that can be described as climate knowledge brokers, focused on sharing climate-based knowledge and networks. These experiences have been overwhelmingly positive and incredibly helpful in building my capacity as a climate action leader creating a fondness for networks that selflessly share information with societal betterment as their main goal.
One collective I speak of is hosted by BC Hydro and it is a network of commercial energy managers. During my three years of participation, I have witnessed the selfless sharing of knowledge, successes, failures, and personal time all for the sake of leading climate action. In a world focused on celebrating successes and individual achievements, this community excels and shines above any other I know of. This is not because of all that has been achieved, which is impressive, hope-inspiring, and motivating to say the least. It is because of the vulnerability shown by members willing to celebrate their failures as a result of pushing the envelope and offering advice to the collective to help prevent others from experiencing similar pitfalls. There is a shared goal, reducing the most carbon emissions possible, that helps put egos to the side and encourage this type of collaboration. Where advice is given with the hope that someone else’s climate action initiative outperforms yours so that you can learn from what they did and improve your initiatives.
Another collective that I have been privileged enough to become a part of is the Northern British Columbia Climate Action Network (NorthCan), which is facilitated by the Community Energy Association (CEA). The CEA is a non-profit that works at the community level to help reduce local emissions. Acknowledging a lack of connections between climate champions within Northern British Columbia, the CEA established NorthCan as a way of creating connections between local governments, Indigenous communities, public sector organizations, and commercial and industrial businesses. The primary focus of these events is less on immediate emission reduction. It is primarily focused on making network connections to share knowledge that can lead to emission reductions. This can be viewed as a northern climate-based think tank focused on sharing experiences, discussing new technologies, topics of concern, and building social capital.
Both BC Hydro’s commercial energy managers network and NorthCAN can be viewed as climate knowledge brokers due to their focus on connecting and sharing knowledge-based resources with climate action leaders who would normally be acting in isolation or searching for resources. As a northern climate action leader working in the mitigation field, I often work in isolation and with little resources making me particularly vulnerable to disruptions and keen to growing support networks. Exposure to these networks and hearing feedback from others in similar situations of operating in isolation motivated me to generate my climate action network with those I interact with. I did not realize I was generating a version of a climate knowledge micro-brokerage by doing this. Micro-brokerage in the sense that I can serve as a conduit to share the climate-based knowledge available through the connections I make with a broker to those not currently connected, in essence becoming a micro-broker. While this will likely change little about how I approach climate action leadership, knowing that what I have been working towards is also sought after on a larger scale is validating and motivating. My approaches to climate action leadership may change little, but the way I approach researching this topic will change greatly as I will now be looking for climate knowledge brokers more than individual sources of knowledge. Invariably this will increase my capacity to support my network allowing me to lead with greater efficacy.
References
weADAPT. (2024). About weADAPT. https://weadapt.org/about-weadapt/