Connecting individuals and communities to promote sustainability actions
Discover How to Get Connected
Hear Sustainability Stories
Watch a Message From One of Our Connected Communities
Practical Tools
Communities You Can Follow
About Climate Connected
This project is building an easy to use set of tools that support people and communities to take the steps needed to help reduce climate change. There are supports to build a ‘decarbonisation’reducing the amount of Carbon Dioxide emissions committee in the community making plan for the local area to reduce carbon emissions. This also includes supports to help get people in our communities more involved in finding out how what we do in our everyday life that increases or decreases the amount of carbon we emit.
About Climate Connected
This project is building an easy to use set of tools that support people and communities to take the steps needed to help reduce climate change. There are supports to build a ‘decarbonisation’reducing the amount of Carbon Dioxide emissions committee in the community making plan for the local area to reduce carbon emissions. This also includes supports to help get people in our communities more involved in finding out how what we do in our everyday life that increases or decreases the amount of carbon we emit.
Use our Connected Resources
Build a Community Structure
Getting an effective team together is a vital step in the community journey to sustainability. We have broken down the actions and resources needed to do this into five key areas where you can build your capacities and skills.
See Success Stories From People & Communities
Some communities and individuals, just like yours have already made great progress on the journey to sustainability, you can see these stories here. Keep in touch and soon you or your community could have it’s own decarbonisation story to tell
Discover Your Carbon Footprint
Our Carbon Footprint tool is currently in development by Energy Co-operatives Ireland Ltd and Galway University. Please join our mailing list and we will let you know when it is ready to use. In the meantime find out about the sustainability impact of your behaviour choices
Make Valuable Connections
Get more people from your community involved in sustainability. Our dialog tool shows you how to get more people talking to eachother and how you can increase how local people become active in making sustainability happen.
2: Co-ops in Europe
The wider co-op experience Ireland and Europe
Stephanie explains how in her work for Aran Island’s Energy Co-operative, Comharchumann Fuinnimh Oileáin Árainn, she meets co-ops around Europe. She tells us how we can learn from them.
3: Participation and Engagement
Sustainable development, and participative democracy.
Seán from Mulranny Community Futures (Mulranny DZ) tells how the ‘whole community’ approach gets all groups together and drives sustainability change
4. The Local Strengths Approach
Use what's in your community to develop it sustainably
Carol Loftus describes the journey of Mulranny from a fading tourist spot to a thriving model of community-driven sustainable development. She outlines how projects emerged, how local people were mobilised. >>
5. Be Aware of Your Resources
Your Community Centre Can Help Your Sustainability Journey
A Resource Centre is a hub for the community to find resources and make connections to help kickstart sustainability actions: find yours and start your own action.
Our latest Sustainability Success Stories from Communities
Boomtreebees – from tiny creatures to a BIG result
Boomtreebees is a conservation and natural beekeeping project in Ireland which is all about protecting the native Irish honeybee (Apis mellifera mellifera). They make semi‑natural habitat (log hives) to serve as nesting sites, and do research and education to share what they have found out about how to help bring back the Irish honey bee in the wild. They have helped Irish bees make more than 200 wild bee hives.
Hinterland West – making links along the food chain
Hinterland (often called ‘Hinterland West Galway’) is a community-rooted project that wants on transform food systems—looking at food insecurity,and inequity. It also wants us to be more connected to the land, and be more sustainable. It brings together research, action, creativity and education to help make a fair and sustainable food future for all. Since it was founded, Hinterland has focussed on reconnecting people with food, farming, and each other. They do this through growing, sharing, learning and imagining. They donate farm produce to local community groups and they have mapped Galway’s food web.
Buaile Bó Ballyloughane – a natural solution
A beach in Galway City was the home of a family of Dexter cows in 2024, to graze the headland east of Ballyloughane beach for several months as part of a project led by Galway City Council, working with a local farmer. Local schools and community groups were invited to participate in a programme to share information about this native Irish breed, farming, and its relationship to Irish biodiversity.
Sustainability Stories from Individuals
Jenni has reduced her flights footprint to using ferries and trains
I travel from Inis Mór, an island on the west coast of Ireland to Finland by ferries and trains. I live permanently in Inis Mór but I am originally from Finland. So I visit friends and family in Finland once a year. I plan to travel this way every time in both directions.
We didn’t really need that second car
The benefits are both immediate, sustainable and you send a clear signal of sustainability, environmental consideration and an active lifestyle to your kids. They will then, hopefully, be more likely and more comfortable making these types of decisions into the future – which they will very likely be forced to do anyway in the coming years to mitigate climate change.
CÃara and Keep Cup Campaigns
The impact of my action has been a reduction in my carbon footprint and control on the amount of single-use waste that I produce. For example, if I go out to work 5 days a week for 48 weeks of the year, buy a takeaway coffee, a plastic bottle of water and dispose of...
Dara, installed PV at his home.
In October 2013 we installed 2 kW of Photovoltaic panels (8 panels) ground-mounted at our home. At that time, we also installed a 5kW heat-pump. In September of 2023, we installed a further 2 kW of Photovoltaic panels, making it 4kW in total. The total electricity...
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