As extreme weather events driven by climate change become increasingly severe, and their economic impacts increasingly obvious, the UK approaches its leadership and hosting of the COP26 United Nations climate change negotiations in Glasgow beginning on November 1st. 2021.
Our Government, employers, educators and civil society are all grappling as to how to engage people and organisations in delivering meaningful carbon reduction and action on climate change quickly and at scale. In very positive news therefore, The Carbon Literacy Project has today announced that more than 20,000 UK citizens have now been formally assessed and certified as Carbon Literate, and as a consequence, pledged and taken well over 40,000 actions to directly address climate change and immediately reduce UK carbon emissions.
Working with citizens, groups and organisations drawn from all sectors of society right across the UK and beyond, The Carbon Literacy Project oversees the delivery of a days worth of learning and action about climate-change. Uniquely however, although quality controlled by the Project, the training is co-designed and delivered not centrally, but by the members of the sectors, groups and audiences actually receiving the training.
Carbon Literacy is thus adaptable for anywhere and yet consistent everywhere, and engages, informs and inspires audiences both to act right now to reduce their carbon emissions, but also to begin to plan and take much longer term action toward a zero-carbon society, whatever they do, and whoever they are.
The Carbon Literacy Project (wholly owned by The Carbon Literacy Trust, Registered Charity no 1156722) works with citizens and community groups, social housing providers and civil society. It works with employers both public and private sector and organisations from SMEs to PLCs and local authorities and Government, and works in formal and informal education with schools, colleges and universities across the UK.
Because of this unique reach across all organisations and sectors of society, the Project has been able to bring together groups, organisations and individuals, to form unique partnerships and consortia, working and acting together to share ideas, resources, and funding, to achieve far more to accelerate climate action and reduce carbon emissions immediately than any single organisation could ever achieve alone.
In summary as regards Carbon Literacy: “The whole is far greater than the sum of the parts”.
Because of its unique approach, the training and certification of 20,000 individuals has been performed not by the central Project working alone, but by the vast network of sectoral partners and organisations distributed across the sectors and geography of the United Kingdom and beyond.
Since its inception in 2012 the Project has grown steadily but for the last five years has been doubling in size every 20 months.
As a result of the effective, collaborative approach of Carbon Literacy, the UK Government (Dept of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)) has funded Carbon Literacy implementation across the public sector, so that every UK local authority, university and college, government department and NHS department now has access to comprehensive, free, government-sponsored Carbon Literacy Toolkits, to acceleration adoption and implementation.
This has been followed by adoption within the wider private and commercial sector, with collaborative toolkits for social housing, the rail sector, the automotive sector, and museum and galleries all now either launched or in advanced preparation.
Over 60 organisations have now been certified as Carbon Literate Organisations, but over 1700 organisations now have Carbon Literate staff, via some 235 unique certified Carbon Literacy courses, in some 10 sectoral consortia, developed, presented and delivered by partner organisations taking action on climate across the UK and beyond.
Work by Jacobs Engineering indicates that each Carbon Literate citizen reduces their personal and/or professional resource footprint by between 5% and 15% annually.
Co-founder and Managing Director of the Carbon Literacy Project, Dave Coleman said;
“One of the core values of Carbon Literacy is that by working together we achieve far more than any of us could alone, and in no field is this more vital than that of climate change.”
“It's easy to feel overwhelmed by climate-change, and wonder what any of us can possibly do to make a difference. However knowledge combined with action replaces fear with empowerment, and this is exactly what Carbon Literacy participants experience.”
“When Carbon Literacy learners are given both knowledge and agency to take action, we see newly Carbon Literate individuals taking person action at the small scale, but also professionally at massive scale, resulting in real savings of carbon immediately, and a long-term shift towards the kinds of personal and organisational behaviours that will deliver the zero-carbon society that we all need.”
“We could not have achieved this without the work of the scores of partner organisations and supporters, the hundreds of trainers, and the thousands of organisations and learners who have undertaken and achieved Carbon Literacy, and who have worked so hard to make this happen and deliver real change now”.
For further information visit www.carbonliteracy.com