Revitalising embodied community knowledges as leverage for climate change engagement

Abstract

Human survival is threatened by climate breakdown and ecological collapse. This levies huge responsibility on society to address how present modes of living have created these problems. Citizens need to learn about the consequences that have been unleashed and find ways to live more sustainably. Yet, the scale of these crises and lack of wisdom to act can be overwhelming, so how will they become more informed and motivated to act? This paper proposes that cultivating communities of practice (Wenger) around low carbon citizenship can help generate discrete engagement strategies that rouse public attention towards changing attitudes and behaviours. To be effective, these engagements need to be relatable, values-oriented, and framed towards the priorities, knowledges, capacities, and lived experiences of the group who each share a passion for a practice and learn collectively how to do it better. Such an approach is explored in the case study, Grow Your Own Community, that sought to engage marginalised communities with decarbonisation activities through the strategic repositioning of their embodied community knowledges (ECK). This community of practice helped to motivate and mobilise local participation by integrating carbon literacy with the situated, practical capacities that already lay within the community. Key findings reveal that revitalising a community’s existing body of knowledge to engage people with climate change knowledge creates the conditions for generating community-led mitigative action.