Climate Emergency—Climate Action Planning and Delivery Recommendations

In 2019, the United Kingdom (UK) became one of the first countries to declare a climate emergency. In this regard, many local governments in the country (which encompass districts, unitary counties, boroughs, and councils) have taken the lead to declare a climate emergency. Only a few local authorities developed and issued plans with specific actions on achieving the targets of their declared emergencies. The following policy memo sheds light upon the most pressing challenges in climate emergency action planning. A preceding comparative analysis (Kandzhova et. al., 2020) revealed that the currently published action plans differ considerably in structure, detailedness and overall approaches. The lack of standardisation of climate action planning from either the national government or other responsible institutions leads to varying local policy responses. The preceding analysis identified the most pertinent challenges to be in the areas of 1) securing finance; 2) social inclusiveness and equality; and 3) realisation of co-benefits of action plans. We present recommendations for each of the aforementioned areas.