Moving Toward Collective Impact in Climate Change Literacy: The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN)

ABSTRACT

In recent years, various climate change education efforts have been launched, including federally (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, etc.) and privately funded projects. In addition, climate literacy and energy literacy frameworks have been developed and deployed, and both have been reviewed and endorsed by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. This paper describes a community-based effort to promote climate and energy literacy: the CLEAN Network (originally the Climate Literacy Network). We describe results from a member survey about the importance of the network to the members' professional lives and review the development and position of the network within the larger community of climate and energy literacy stakeholders. The CLEAN Network was first formed in 2008 to support climate literacy efforts, largely through voluntary efforts. It serves as a champion and rudimentary and unfunded backbone support organization, enabling first steps toward establishing the elements necessary for successful collective impact in achieving climate literacy. Among the elements that have been described to be essential for a collective impact, the CLEAN Network most effectively provides continuous communication for the broad community of climate literacy stakeholders. The network enables its professionally diverse members to learn of one another's needs and to begin identifying mutually reinforcing activities that will address the common agenda and shared system of measures (two other key elements of collective impact) once they are established. The CLEAN Network serves as a small champion group that continues to seek input from the larger climate literacy stakeholder community on how a backbone support organization might support and extend their efforts. The next steps in a collective impact approach to climate and energy literacy include defining and forming a backbone support organization to facilitate the development of a shared agenda and a shared system of measures, which has the support of all stakeholders, that is sufficiently funded and can help mobilize funding to scale what works in climate and energy literacy. Such an organization would have collective impact that is commensurate to the challenges and opportunities climate change present to the nation.

Key words::

• climate literacy
• climate change
• collective impact
• impact of climate change
• community
• climate literacy essential principles
• climate education
• energy education
• energy literacy
• shared measures
• backbone organization
• common agenda
• climate literacy activities
• virtual community
• community building

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Susan B. Sullivan, Cathy Manduca, Sean Fox, Marian Grogan, Jeffrey Lockwood, Candace Dunlap, Karin Kirk, Monica Bruckner, Cynthia Howell, Beth Simmons, Jennifer Helms, Susan Lynds, and Scott Carley for their contributions to the development of CLEAN. The authors also thank Sarah Hill and Susan Lynds for their help in editing and formatting the paper. The CLEAN Project is funded by grants from NOAA (NA12OAR4310143, NA12OAR4310142), the NSF (DUE-0938051, DUE-0938020, DUE-0937941), and the U.S. Department of Energy. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF, NOAA, and the Department of Energy.