Climate change case studies

Voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) are choosing to respond to climate change in a range of ways, as you’ll see in the case studies here.

A complex challenge

Climate change is a complex and often confusing challenge, which many charities find hard to grapple with. Each organisation will need to decide for itself how to prepare for a changed climate.

In this section, you can read about the experiences of several organisations that have begun to explore what climate change holds in store for their beneficiaries and their work, and how each has chosen to respond.

The case studies

The Big Response Project

The four organisations featured here have all taken part in The Big Response, a project delivered in 2009 by NCVO, Global Action Plan and Green Alliance, funded by the Baring Foundation.

Over several months, each of the participating organisations received one-to-one support to help them:

understand the likely impact of climate change on their beneficiaries and their work
explore strategic options and make decisions about how to respond
engage key stakeholders in these decisions
act sustainably by undertaking an environmental audit of their operations.

The project was one of four initiatives aiming to explore how relevant taking action on climate change is for non-environmental charities working in England. The Big Response focused on organisations supporting vulnerable people. The other projects produced guidance for:

refugee organisations preparing for climate-related immigration to the UK
community organisations wanting to engage local people with climate change
children's organisations.

The programme helped a diverse range of VCOs, many of whom had not considered climate change before, to explore what it meant for their beneficiaries and their work. It found that all organisations would be affected by climate change and could identify positive ways to take action.

Project report

The Big Response project report (PDF 325KB) contains a range of insights on providing effective support to help VCOs prepare for climate change. It also features recommendations for VCOs, support providers, funders, government and policy makers stemming from three headline messages:

A changing climate is likely to have a huge impact on the beneficiaries that many VCOs seek to help.
VCOs can be galvanised to address this issue in a strategic way.
Organisations will need external support to start engagement on this process.

An overview of the findings is also available in a two-page Big Respone project report executive summary (PDF 40KB).