The social benefits of climate action
The Scottish Climate Intelligence Service, co-led by ECCI, has published the first of a series of briefings highlighting some of the key social benefits of local climate action that could be implemented by local authorities across Scotland.
Working in collaboration with ECCI's CO-BENS Team, SCIS are working to identify ways to integrate these 'co-benefits' into the SCIS capacity-building programme for local authorities, kicking this off with a series of briefings.
The short, digestible, impact-driven publications communicate the win-wins for key activity shift areas alongside the interventions associated with delivering them. In line with SCIS strategy of starting where local authorities can have the most impact, these are being published in the following order:
- Active travel
- Electric Vehicles
- Public transport
- Heat pumps
- Heat networks
Read the first briefing in the series below:
Working in collaboration: SCIS and CO-BENS
Two innovative ECCI teams joined forces to prodcue the briefings: SCIS and CO-BENS.
Joint led by ECCI, SCIS is building capacity within local authorities to take effective, just and equitable climate action. By working within and across local authorities, SCIS supports collaboration and help to share skills, knowledge, insights to support and accelerate effective local climate action. The ECCI SCIS team is led by Clare Wharmby and includes Data Officers Maja Pitcairn, Killian Bohan and Aileen Whitehead.
CO-BENS develops methodologies and models to understand how climate action complements and conflicts with the wider set of economic, environmental and social challenges we are facing. CO-BENS team members Andrew Sudmant (Data Programme Manager) and Senior Carbon Analyst, Ruaidhrí Higgins Lavery, are based at ECCI.
Further reading
SCIS Policy and Research Officer Sarah Bissett explores the idea of co-benefits, why they matter, and how local authorities can start to re-think the ‘costs’ of climate action in a recent Insight blog, also highlighting the UK Co-Benefits Atlas - an open source website where anyone can look up their area and explore the multiple benefits the net zero transition can bring.
UK Co-Benefits Atlas
The UK Co-Benefits Atlas is a powerful new mapping tool to help policymakers and communities better understand the wide-ranging social benefits of climate action, based on data modelling by the CO-BENS team at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute (ECCI) and developed in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics.
Explore the data Atlas to further understand connections between a wide range of social, economic and environmental priorities: