written by
Denise Jacobs

4 steps to realize a lot of climate impact with little manpower

Consultancy 3 min read , June 20, 2019

Are you a sustainability or environmental civil servant and is the climate plan mostly depending on you? Do you not have a lot of time to execute this plan because you're combining it with other tasks? With these 4 steps you can boost your climate plan and get more results! 🚀

1. Work on realistic actions

Your climate plan can serve as a basis to draw up actions which will bring you to the final result. It's important that your actions are ambitious, but achievable as well. Especially when you're working on the climate plan by yourself. Nobody can execute a climate plan on their own.

Make sure to involve other departments. They can help you with the execution of certain actions, but also offer insights on domains you're not an expert in.

💡 Tip: You can read how you best involve each service in our article series 🚀Climate actions for each department.

If you're not the one to execute the action, discuss with a colleague if (s)he wants to be responsible for the action. That person can then serve as a contact as well.

Set up an internal working group, to get ideas and inspiration.

💡 Tip: An action will not always lead to direct of CO2 reduction. Actions that lead to sensitization or long term CO2 reduction, are good actions as well!

2. Follow up on the action 🤲

Make a step-by-step plan for how you will complete the action. A tool such as Excel can help to get an overview. Take note of every intermediate step and the progress of them. Indicate when a step is completed and give the steps a logic order and a straightforward way to follow up on.

You can supplement this document with internal notes and documents, which can help you with the execution.

💡 Tip: Did you know you can easily track something like this in our FutureproofedCities tool? You can add actions and check out their progress easily, but also maintain an overview of the bigger picture of your climate plan.

Want to know more about FutureproofedCities? Contact us for more information or ask for a free demo.

3. Evaluate the action 🧐

Evaluate the action's results as good as you can. How successful was it and how did the execution go? Did the action lead to a direct CO2 reduction? Great, try to estimate these results as well. Was this not the case? Actions that have long term results or create awareness are successful as well. 👍

An example: introducing shared cars won't have a direct impact on CO2 emissions in your city, but will reduce car ownerships in the long run. It's also useful to keep track of these results.

🏆 This step may seem time-consuming, but it is very valuable. Learn from your experiences so that you can do even better next time!

4. Communicate about your action 📣

We cannot stress this enough. Communication is crucial, so communicate the action's results to the outside world. This way you create publicity for the actions and involve other parties.

Explain which actions you're going to execute or are executing right now. Who are you targeting and what's the benefit for them? Who can join? Be sure to communicate about this. Think about participants of a trade fair, an info session, ...

💡 Tip: Want to know more about how to communicate about your climate plan? It's your lucky day, as we already wrote an article filled with tips!

💪 Hopefully these tips will help you to execute climate actions successfully!

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