Our research and assessment process for the report took place in the four phases outlined below. 

• Review and assess
  • Reviewed 45 state plans to identify best practices across the country
  • Assessed all state, MSA, and tribal submissions from the US South
• Code and cluster
  • Coded and processed qualitative data from assessed reports
  • Clustered and mapped key insights
• Conduct interviews
  • Conducted in depth interviews with practitioners to provide additional nuance and insights to initial findings
• Distill insights
  • Integrated report and interview data to distill the eight key participatory strategies featured in the report

The US South is experiencing compounding issues that make it especially vulnerable to the devastating impacts of climate change. Persistent population growth, aging infrastructure, and social inequality are not unique to the South, but they are uniquely and increasingly exacerbated there in ways not found in other regions of the US.

Safeguarding the environment is as much a social act as it is a scientific process. Today, emerging research is confirming and expanding our understanding that human and natural systems are interconnected and interdependent.

The key participatory strategies featured in this report are more than just best practices. They are the result of the hard work of hundreds of state, county, municipal, and tribal governments alongside universities, community-based organizations, faith-based institutions, and others who have engaged their communities as partners in planning for a more equitable and sustainable future.

These Participatory Climate Action Plans are an essential first step in an ongoing process that others will carry forward in the decades ahead, as people and the environment become even more inextricably linked.

SOUTHERN ECONOMIC ADVANCEMENT PROJECT (SEAP): Launched in 2019, SEAP partners with policy thinkers and doers to amplify their efforts and bridge gaps in policy infrastructure. SEAP’s goal is to advance policies that improve economic security, healthcare access, and environmental justice for all Southerners—acting as a connector, convener, and policy entrepreneur across issues and states, translating good ideas to the Southern context. SEAP researches policies to achieve stronger outcomes at the state and local level in the South, amplifies the activities of local organizations through technical assistance and grants, and provides a bridge between the best learnings nationally and a regional strategy for implementation and engagement. Embedded in the work of SEAP is a rigorous consideration of race, class and gender, which intersect all social and economic policy in the South.

SEAP’s Our Dollars, Our Dreams initiative empowers Southern communities to take ownership of unprecedented levels of federal funding available through the American Rescue Plan (ARP), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and others. Through this initiative, SEAP engages with elected officials and community leaders throughout the region to spread awareness of opportunities, provide support in applying for funds, and share best practices and innovative approaches to equity and engagement.

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The National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC): NCoC was founded in 1946 and chartered by Congress in 1953 to serve as a central hub for America’s efforts to make citizenship more effective by developing a field that contributes to a more active, alert, enlightened, conscientious, and progressive citizenry. Today, NCoC achieves that mission through a range of programs that enable communities to measure civic health through public data, empower stakeholders to leverage civic infrastructure to understand our digital civic discourse, and convene the wider community to ensure that our institutions centralize equity in our political representation. In addition to these year-round programs, NCoC hosts an Annual Conference that brings together the organizations and partners we serve with thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners to further the field of civic engagement.

NCoC is home to the Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI), which has several projects focused on the relationship between online communications and civic impact around climate issues. The Climate Discourse Observatory (CDO) is a partnership with the University of Miami to examine the online discourse around climate and sustainability. The Research and Action Hub (RAH) is a pilot project that empowers local communities to understand the climate discourse on issues around sustainability and translate those insights into action. In addition, NCoC is home to the Pathways to Prosperity project that develops reports based on indicators that measure the impact of climate shocks on communities.