Think Globally, Act Locally? Evaluating Boston Climate Projects’ Community Engagement

Successful climate change mitigation, adaptation, and transformation will require a balance of bottom-up, community-led planning and engagement with top-down resource deployment. While many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society groups, and local agencies argue that they work closely w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human ecology : an interdisciplinary journal Vol. 52; no. 1; pp. 173 - 184
Main Authors: Gallo, Ava, Aldrich, Daniel P.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York Springer US 01.02.2024
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Anthropology
Archival research
Civil society
climate
Climate change
Climate change mitigation
Community change
Community involvement
Community participation
Community planning
Decision making
Environmental Management
Extreme weather
Geography
NGOs
Nongovernmental organizations
Planners
Residents
Social Sciences
society
Sociology
weather
Climate change
Qualitative methods
Community ownership
United States
Resident engagement
Coastal cities
Eesilience
Boston
ISSN:0300-7839, 1572-9915
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Successful climate change mitigation, adaptation, and transformation will require a balance of bottom-up, community-led planning and engagement with top-down resource deployment. While many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society groups, and local agencies argue that they work closely with residents, especially on plans to manage extreme weather events and climate change, the degree to which local, urban-based climate projects engage with coastal communities remains an open question. Using interviews with nearly 20 project managers, local planners, and decision makers along with site visits to and archival research on three core projects in Boston, we evaluate the degree to which residents participate, plan, and engage. Despite being heralded by some observers as truly participatory, we found that none of the projects achieved the highest levels of participation possible seen in other community led projects. Further, none of the projects achieved consistent scores on the three evaluation criteria: equity, efficacy, and efficiency. This gap between rhetoric and reality must be closed if Boston and other vulnerable, coastal cities wish to build more equitable ways of managing challenges like climate change.
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ISSN:0300-7839
1572-9915
DOI:10.1007/s10745-023-00473-2