ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the diverse forms of civic engagement that have emerged from initial efforts to educate the public in order to achieve forms of behavioral change consistent with reducing personal greenhouse gas emissions through to more recent approaches which have sought to harness community knowledge and capacities through processes of co-design and efforts to empower communities to respond to climate change. Civic engagement has also emerged from the “bottom up” through the mobilization of place-based community responses to reducing emissions and increasing resilience and most recently through large social movement protests such as Fridays for the Future calling on governments and business to take more action to address the climate challenge. Civic engagement can make a significant and positive contribution to climate action and spur policy change, but it can also be used as a vehicle through which to displace responsibility, be beset by accountability problems, and serve to include some while excluding already marginalized voices. Civic participation is not then a panacea for improving climate politics, but remains an essential means through which those in power can be held to account and alternative approaches to addressing the challenges climate change poses can begin to be addressed.
