For the first time, the Centre for Climate Engagement (CCE) participated in the annual Cambridge Zero Community Day. The event was open to the public, with participation from environmental and community organisations from across Cambridge.
The event
Throughout the day, CCE asked the question: “Who should be responsible for leading climate action – government, business, or local communities?” This question is critical to our work, since it explores where responsibility lies, and how leadership can be shared or coordinated across sectors.
On our stand, we had diverse, insightful conversations with community members, from children and university academics to community organisers and local politicians – all centered on this question.
In the afternoon, we held a Citizens’ Jury to explore the question further. Our panelists spoke on behalf of each group – government, business and local community – and our audience participated in a lively discussion on climate leadership, responsibility and collaboration.
To better understand public perceptions of climate leadership, and to get the community heard in the debate, we also ran a series of polls asking the same question. We ran one on our stand, and one on social media leading up to the event, with the support of Cambridge Zero and the University of Cambridge. Then, we opened it to our audience at the start of the Citizens’ Jury, and again at the end of the Jury, to see if opinions had changed.
We saw slight shifts and variations in opinion, but a general consensus that collaboration is key between these groups, and especially between governments and local communities, to drive just, effective climate action.
Meet the Panel
Representing local politics: Councillor Bridget Smith
Bridget began her career in health and education before moving into politics 15 years ago. As a self-employed community development consultant, she focused on environmentally sustainable community buildings, winning several awards. Elected as District Councillor for Gamlingay in 2008, she became Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council in 2018. She sits on the board of the Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority and has been involved in the Oxford to Cambridge Corridor for the past 7 years leading in the creation of the OxCam Environmental Principle. She recently joined the government-led Cambridge Growth Advisory Group.
Representing local business: Savinien Gauchet
Savinien holds a Master of Engineering from IMT Mines Alès, France, with a focus on strategy, innovation, and advanced materials. At Cambridge Design Partnership, he led sustainability initiatives including Eco-design services, and ESG compliance. Now an independent consultant, he supports the development of sustainable technologies and advises organisations on environmental and regulatory challenges. His experience bridging corporate strategy and grassroots action enables him to deliver impactful, actionable sustainability solutions across sectors like FMCG, healthcare, and consumer tech.
Website link:
https://sustainabilityinprogress.com/
Representing local community: Chris Pointon
Chris leads Cambridgeshire Climate Emergency, who organise a network of community climate leaders around the county, providing support, advice and resources for one another. He is also a director of the Great Collaboration, an initiative that supports action on climate and biodiversity amongst towns, parishes and community groups. It is currently piloting in East Anglia ahead of a national rollout. Chris works for Icebreaker One, a not-for-profit creating a web of data to accelerate the transition to net zero.
Website links:
https://camemergency.org
https://greatcollaboration.uk
https://linkedin.com/in/chrispointon
Representing student community: Alexander Robinson
Alexander Robinson is a graduate student and Environmental Representative at Hughes Hall pursuing an MPhil in Anthropocene Studies. Having previously obtained a BA in Political Science from the George Washington University, Robinson formerly worked on environmental policy as a legislative intern in the US Senate. A native of Athens, Georgia, Robinson is writing his dissertation on Biden-era Arctic policy. He explores the tension between the government’s stated goal of environmental protection and its underlying desire to exploit a changing Arctic for geopolitical gain.
Linked In profile: www.linkedin.com/in/afhr2.
Key Takeaways from the Citizens’ Jury: What does effective climate action require?
1. Central government leadership
Central government must lead on climate through consistent, bold policy and funding frameworks. Local governments might have ambitions and plans to take action, but often can’t execute them without support from central government.
Representing South Cambs District Council, Councillor Bridget Smith gives an example:
“I don’t want to build any houses that haven’t got rainwater recycling, which don’t have photovoltaics on the roofs, which aren’t built to the highest energy efficiency standards. But the central government has stopped me from doing that.
Developers build for profit, on the whole, but they obey the laws that they have to obey. Here, there’s a complete void from the central government. We’re not seeing leadership from government – we’re not seeing a policy framework that allows us to do really innovative things.”
2. Alignment between sectors
Effective action requires strategic coordination between central government, local authorities, business, academia, and communities. Right now, disjointed governance structures and funding flows mean that action is often slow and inefficient.
Chris Pointon said:
“Each level should create space for the one below to act effectively – that means money, capacity, coordination.”
3. Community empowerment
Communities can effectively deliver climate action – they have detailed local knowledge, and can act fast when supported. Past models – like the UK’s 2015 Syrian refugee resettlement network – show that trained, organised citizens can drive major outcomes. But they need support.
Alexander Robinson said:
“Our student and academic communities might not be able to effectuate topline change when it comes to global figures, but there is so much to be done at the community level.”
Chris Pointon added:
“Communities need to get trained. Citizens need to understand how to connect with each other, and the limits of what they can do, but also what they can achieve. In doing that, they can start to demand resources from government, materials and interventions from business, and ideas from academia, to enable them to take action at a grassroots level in their communities.”
4. Innovation in business
Businesses can also help drive change, especially when clients or governments demand ESG compliance. Innovation in business can drive climate action, but often, it needs early-stage support. Small grants and challenge-based competitions, like hackathons, help ideas take root before they can be scaled up.
Savinien Gauchet said:
“To increase and speed up climate action in business, we should push for more challenges or competitions that lead to small pockets of funding, to enable innovation – to give the general public and small teams within companies the freedom to explore solutions.”
5. Civic mandate and political will
While central government must take the lead, it’s directed and mobilised by community support and electoral engagement. Civic pressure – through campaigning, partnerships, and especially voting – is vital to unlock systemic change.
Closing the jury, Paul Jefferiss said:
“Ultimately, it’s all of you – our communities – who give government the mandate to act, and hold them to account. And you can only do that by voting for them – by ensuring that the ones who want to do that are voted into power.”
The audience was then asked to vote in the poll once more, before the results were revealed.
Poll Results
Social media poll:
For two weeks preceding Community Day, we shared a poll on CCE, Cambridge Zero and University of Cambridge social media channels, which generated 3,843 votes.
- Government: 60%
- Local communities: 23%
- Business: 17%
Exhibition poll:
We ran the poll on our table throughout Community Day, and asked visitors to vote.
- Government: 78%
- Business: 16%
- Local communities: 5%
First Citizens’ Jury poll:
At the start of the jury, we asked the audience to vote.
- Government: 55%
- Local communities: 36%
- Business: 9%
Second Citizens’ Jury poll:
At the end of the jury, after the discussion, we asked the audience to vote again.
- Government: 81%
- Local communities: 19%
- Business: 0%
In each setting, respondents identified government as the leading actor in addressing the climate crisis.
Summary
Through the exhibition, the Citizens’ Jury and the polls, the Community Day allowed us to engage our own communities more deeply in questions of climate leadership. In these conversations, there was a clear consensus that governments should lead action – especially central government – followed by community, and finally business.
But perhaps more importantly, it’s clear that all groups must communicate, align goals, frameworks and funding, and crucially, collaborate, in order to unlock strategic, systemic climate action, at a scale beyond what we’re seeing right now. Each group can contribute in unique ways, but ultimately, all three are fundamentally interdependent.
Given the important role communities have to play in addressing climate change and based on the success of our Community Day event, as well as the huge response to our online poll, we plan to deepen our engagement with the public on climate change. We’ll do this through a mix of polls and events, from leading Green Week activities in our own community at Hughes Hall early next year, to speaking on the topic of sustainability in cities at a conference in South Korea in September. We’ll also return to the Cambridge Climate Community Day next year to see whether opinions have changed or strengthened about who should be leading on climate.
Slingshot