This guide contains barrier-busting strategies, a business case and roadmap to make your association future-fit for climate change.
Does your organisation want to play its part in combatting climate change but doesn't know where to start?
The British Columbia Council for International Cooperation (BCCIC) plans to bridge that gap with its launch of a 50-page "how-to" guide to assist industry and professional associations mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The author of the report is Brennan Strandberg-Salmon, an SFU undergraduate student with the Faculty of Environment, who worked as a Climate Emergency Policy Analyst for the council under a PICS internship from May to August 2020. In collaboration with council members, he developed the guide through stakeholder consultations with nearly 40 representatives from provincial and national associations, plus sustainable business and climate change experts, through interviews and a virtual roundtable.
The guide contains resources, best practices, and steps that associations can pursue to help their members respond to the climate crisis – and make sure they are future-fit. It includes a handy interactive scorecard that associations can use to rank themselves and set a benchmark from which to measure progress. It pinpoints gaps that can be addressed through climate change action plans, and identifies barriers and how to overcome them.
Brennan Strandberg-Salmon says he is pleased with the widespread uptake of the report among associations across BC, plus endorsements by the Canadian Institute of Planners and the Fisheries Council of Canada, and the Canadian Society of Association Executives. He was also invited to present on the guide to BC's Professional Associations Adaptation Working Group in October.
Nicolas Gaulin, BCCIC executive coordinator, says the toolkit's positive reception highlights a growing understanding of the urgent need to shape a greener and fairer world. He also sees the toolkit as part of a greater youth-led shift from climate discourse to climate action.
The Guide’s release coincides with a pivotal moment in human history as the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impacts on human health and the economy. 2020 also initiates the 10-year countdown before the effects of climate change – which will be the world’s largest health and economic crisis – become potentially irreversible.
The council says it produced this guide to put climate change on the radar of associations and their members when society recovers from the pandemic and re-thinks business-as-usual.