Climate Caucus is a non-partisan network of 600+ current and former local elected leaders and over 1000 allies, leading the transformation needed for communities to thrive within planetary boundaries.
Collectively, we create and implement 21st-century socially-just policies which align with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC), Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ( IPBES), and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

 

Climate Caucus serves as:
  • A meeting place for local elected leaders to connect
  • A centralized location for local government climate policy in Canada
  • A collective force to advocate at the regional, provincial, territorial, and federal orders of government 
Local Action Matters
Not only are local governments on the front lines of climate change (floods, droughts, landslides, forest fires, heatwaves, water shortages), importantly, our members directly influence about half of Canada’s energy use & emissions. Local governments can move far more quickly than other orders of government, which is critical during this decade of transformation.
Climate Justice
Social injustice can manifest at the community level in the forms of exclusion, systemic racism, food & housing insecurity, poorer health outcomes, gender-based violence, homelessness, the poisoned drug supply crisis, and poverty. Existing structural inequities mean that climate change impacts are not experienced equally (on the local and global levels). Climate policy can unintentionally reinforce and exacerbate existing inequities, so it’s critical that all climate-related policies be viewed through a social justice framework. Climate Caucus partnered with the University of Victoria to develop and pilot a systems-based framework that is available to all our members here.