Perspectives
A Common Agenda for Collective Climate Impact by Buddy Burch and Jock Gilchrist
C
limate activists share a common aspiration: to live on a planet that can sustain future generations. This means avoiding a 1.5-degree global temperature increase and the associated consequences. More groups than ever before are engaged in this work, but we still emit increasing amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs), pushing us towards irreversible tipping points and ecological devastation.
In the recent article in Solutions Journal entitled Collective Impact for Climate Mitigation,1 R. Bruce Hull and Rich Dooley propose a Community Energy Plan template and a set of components required to achieve “collective impact,” a tool used to “organize stakeholders to address complex adaptive problems.” The model’s set of components include a common agenda, mutually reinforcing activities, transparent accounting using shared metrics, continuous communication, an influential champion, and 14 | Solutions | Fall 2020 | www.thesolutionsjournal.com
adequate financial resources. We agree that the climate movement can amplify its effectiveness through a collective impact model. This starts with a common agenda, also known as an overarching strategy or theory of change2 – the “how” to reduce greenhouse gas commensurate with the speed and scale of the crisis. We believe this is currently missing from the climate movement. We offer an overarching strategy that could be adopted by networks of climate organizations.