Volunteering for Climate Action

12/04/2021

Date of Publication:  October, 2020

Authors:                     Cliff Allum, Peter Devereux, Benjamin Lough, and Rebecca Tiessen

Published by:             International Forum for Volunteering in Development (IVCO)

The paper is structured around the four IVCO 2020 themes of advocacy and awareness, adaptation and resilience, capacity building, and policies and systems. It draws on a review of the literature in this area and primary research findings from a 2020 survey of volunteer involving organisations. It presents the contemporary views of these organisations on issues linking volunteering for development and climate action. It highlights the opportunities and choices IVCOs face when deciding whether to continue to focus mostly on adaptation in the Global South or whether to use this experience more strategically to also tackle the causes of climate change largely in the Global North.

Key Points

  1. Climate action is more pressing than ever. The expansion of climate change-related impacts and challenges around the world, combined with insufficient mitigation and adaptation strategies, requires innovative models, conceptual frameworks, policies and practices.
  2. Climate justice is not a programme area and it is not a trade off with other development activities but the context in which they can be accelerated. For example, sustainable livelihood programmes can be implemented in ways that simultaneously tackle climate change.
  3. The new United Nations Volunteer Accelerator Tool Kit offers significant tools in this respect to demonstrate the distinctive contribution of volunteering to simultaneously tackle inequality and climate change.

There were five recommendations which addressed:

  1. Advocacy and awareness (e.g., revisiting principles of best practice, building on ideas of collective action and solidarity).
  2. Adaptation and resilience (e.g., climate action must begin with promoting the voice of marginalised communities).
  • Capacity building which needs to start from a vision of climate justice and beyond adaptive approaches.
  1. Policies and Systems: volunteer networks have a key leadership role in this field.
  2. Future research is needed (e.g., gender inequality).

The full report is available here.