Established in March 2020, the Community Climate Action Working Group (CCAWG) was the first working group to be established as part of Belfast Climate Commission. The CCAWG is chaired by Dr Amanda Slevin (PCAN Policy Fellow, Queen’s University Belfast) and CCAWG members include two Belfast Climate Commissioners and Commission members from a wider range of community, voluntary, environmental and activist groups rooted in geographical and cultural communities across Belfast (a list of CCAWG members is provided below).

As a working group of Belfast Climate Commission, the Community Climate Action Working Group benefits from research and policy-analysis conducted by PCAN members yet is distinct in its action-orientated focus to affect change in and with communities. CCAWG brings together a diverse range of individuals and groups committed to driving participative, inclusive and just climate action in order to co-create a healthier and sustainable world, beginning with our communities.

The CCAWG’s vision is ‘to co-create transformative climate action with and in communities across Belfast’ by:

• Becoming a collaborative space to co-create transformative community climate action with and in communities across Belfast
• Drawing on a diversity of knowledge and experience to improve climate action
• Sharing information with communities about climate
• Acting as a positive impetus for bringing together a diverse range of individuals and groups to co-act for climate action
• Working with and for communities who will be/are most affected by climate violence
• Adopting a multi-level focus which addresses underpinning systematic injustices and inequalities that have caused climate chaos and many other crises (health, social, economic etc.)
• Driving the establishment of Community Climate Action Networks across four geographical areas of Belfast (North, South, West, East) as part of a wider Community Climate Action project which aims to raise awareness about climate action and delivers participative community climate action
• Co-producing a model for community climate action that delivers climate action while offering valuable experience and learning which could be applied within other communities, contexts and countries

During April and May 2020, CCAWG members identified the following priorities:

• Increase community participation in, and awareness of, climate action
• Create a shared vision of what Climate Justice means 
• Undertake research on community need and levels of current engagement around climate
• Understand existing structures and ongoing work around community engagement through these gaps and opportunities
• Review engagement mechanisms existing in Belfast and those used in other cities to make recommendations on what might work in Belfast
• Establish a CCAWG structure that enables wider participation of community members across Belfast via Community Climate Action Networks
• Communicate the work of the CCAWG back to communities
• Encourage new communities to take climate action
• Pilot community climate action initiatives in at least one area of Belfast (North, South, East, West)
• Update Belfast Climate Commission and Belfast Resilience and Sustainability Board on good practice, creative approaches to engagement, recommendations

Despite challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic, the CCAWG continue to hold regular virtual meetings and have commenced their 'Mapping Community Climate Action' research project.