Are you and your team about to start work on updating or completely developing your municipality's business program and want to ensure that it takes advantage of the opportunities and challenges of the climate transition? Great! Then the following checklist might be a good place to start looking at together, especially if the ambition is to exponentially accelerate the climate transition to create a good life for all within the planetary boundaries.
Creating a business program is a solid task that requires many different skills and approaches to climate change adaptation. Therefore, it is crucial to form a mixed team and also get help from outside the municipal organization.
The mixed team needs to work in a way that allows them to best express themselves and where everyone's experiences are respected. There are many different inclusive methods here, such as strengths-based development, which is future-focused and thus helps to avoid infected discussions about past events and creates immediate action.
To know what is relevant for your own municipality, it is important to analyze the structure of the business community both municipally and regionally. Who are the largest companies? Who is involved in the climate transition? What effects have already been achieved and what are the plans?
A plan without a budget is just a wish list. The work of both analyzing and developing the climate transition must be linked to investments and alternative costs. Given the climate goals of municipalities and companies, there are investments that many different actors need to agree to make. The charging infrastructure is an example of this. Remember to look at added value!
A baseline analysis makes it easier to follow up and demonstrate results. Good examples are good for creating concreteness but need to be complemented with trends and descriptions of systemic changes. Is the transition accelerating or is it linear? Are results going up or down? What do the forecasts look like? Here it is important to use communicators to produce a good mix of stories about both successes and the future as well as visualizations of statistics.
There are many ways to develop collaboration between municipalities and business to accelerate the climate transition and Viable Cities, in collaboration with the Climate Municipalities and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, has collaborated on a compilation of examples and tools. A good way to get relevant inspiration is to find a municipality that is similar to your own but has made more progress in its strategic and operational climate work. The regional connection is also important.
There is a lot to do and the calendar is full, which makes it easy to put the urgent before the important. Therefore, make sure that the development work is really fun. Gather the team in exciting environments! Offer coffee and cake! Get experiences from the culture! Do a role play! Get inspired by really creative people with high ambitions, such as Bruce Mau and his 24 Principles for Massive Change or Climaginaries. Statistics are great, but good stories are most important.
