Climate – Ethelo

Greenspace Plan

solutions — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 18:35:31 +0000

Engage a community in developing a strategy for ensuring sufficient greenspace

Carbon Budget

solutions — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 03:06:01 +0000

.https://event-planning.ethelo.net/

Salt Spring Carbon Budget Case

case-studies-directory — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 20:01:17 +0000

Building a Community-Driven Climate Action Plan Amidst a Pandemic

When the COVID 19 pandemic first hit, Salt Spring Island’s Climate Action Plan Steering Committee initially postponed their Climate Action Plan public engagement because traditional face-to-face meetings weren’t an option. But with the Ethelo platform, they found a way to meaningfully engage a diverse group of residents in the discussions online, educate them about the trade-offs involved and create consensus around the final outcome.

With help from Ethelo and eDemocracy’s digital marketing and participant recruitment services, Salt Spring reached its goal of hearing from a diverse group that made up 14 percent of the island’s residents. And the Ethelo algorithm helped them develop a plan that met their ambitious GHG reduction targets, which had 82 percent support from the residents who participated.

936
participants

5000
comments

Gary Holman

CRD LOCALLY ELECTED OFFICIAL

Meaningfully engaging online

When the Salt Spring Island local governments declared a climate emergency in 2019, residents quickly realized they needed to update their 2011 Climate Action Plan (CAP) if they hoped to reach their 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets.

The CAP Steering Committee used the United Nations recommendation to set a goal of reducing GHG emissions by 50 percent by 2030. They worked with a number of different island organizations including local non-profit Transition Salt Spring, and local government officials, to identify mitigation and adaptation strategies. Then they collaborated with Ethelo and eDemocracy to plan a public engagement to hear community perspectives that would inform the plan.

When the COVID 19 pandemic hit in early 2020 and the face-to-face component of the community consultation the CAP Steering Committee had planned was no longer possible, and they initially considered postponing their engagement.

But with the Ethelo platform, they found a way to meaningfully engage a diverse group of residents in the discussions online, educate them about the trade-offs involved and create consensus around the most broadly supported climate solutions.

Inclusivity and education

The team helped to create a customized engagement organized into six major sections: Transportation, Homes and Buildings, Food and Agriculture, Forests, Waste Reduction and Tourism/Commercial.

It was important to the committee that residents had the information and insight they needed to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. That was made possible by including a significant amount of educational content in a format that was convenient and easy for participants to digest.

Along the way, participants could also learn that it was easier to reduce GHGs in some sections than others. So they could understand the difficulty of each option and trade-offs required when making final planning decisions.

“The online public engagement was very effective. The eDemocracy team made the setup and execution of the process easy and efficient,” says Darryl Martin, Chair of the Climate Action Plan Steering Committee. “We learned a lot about the priorities of our particular community and gained further understanding of our citizenry through the 233 pages of comments the survey garnered.

The platform also directly included participants in the process by letting them create their own plan for the Island. As people voted on different degrees of GHG reductions throughout the process, the platform displayed a real-time total of how much they were reducing and how difficult it was to achieve their plan. Their goal was to eliminate at least 35,000 tons of GHGs and keep the difficulty rating under five.

With 936 participants, millions of possibilities emerged from those plans—far more than any spreadsheet could handle. But Ethelo’s algorithm let the committee quickly sort through the feedback and learn which options got the most support from the community.

The team worked closely with the committee throughout the process, helping with everything from setup to moderation, technical support and data reporting.

Exceeding engagement and GHG goals

Understanding that Ethelo and eDemocracy offered a solution that would let them reach beyond the “usual suspects” who showed up for public consultations, the CAP Steering Committee set a goal of reaching a representative sample of 5 to 10 percent of the Salt Spring population.

“It’s challenging to engage a representative slice of our island community using traditional public meetings. Generally, the same small group of people attends all the public engagement sessions,” said Island Trust Elected Official, Laura Patrick. “It was great to see that a broad cross-section of community members took part in the process and, as a result, this process will be able to help us identify specific policies that can be more widely agreed upon by the community.”

A total of 14 percent of the population participated in the engagement, exceeding the committee’s initial goal. And the result was a plan that would reduce 40,688 tons of GHGs—well beyond the 35,000-ton minimum—that 82 percent of the community could support.

Along with providing an accessible online platform, the team helped the committee achieve this objective by providing targeted digital marketing campaigns as well as traditional on-the-ground marketing designed to reach underrepresented segments of the Salt Spring community.

While the committee considered the solutions collectively proposed by the community to be difficult, they see them as achievable overall and invaluable for informing their final decisions.

“This process has helped many community members understand the scale of change required and the trade-offs involved as well as provide their own unique ideas to the plan,” said Gary Holman, the CRD’s locally elected official “It has been an invaluable contribution to our ability to make change a reality in our community.”

“The online public engagement was very effective. The eDemocracy team made the setup and execution of the process easy and efficient. We learned a lot about the priorities of our particular community and gained further understanding of our citizenry through the 233 pages of comments the survey garnered.”

Darryl J. Martin, Chair, Climate Action Plan Steering Committee

Water Conservation Strategy

case-studies — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 01:50:55 +0000

Including residents in a conversation about the future of water

Hunter Water provides water and wastewater services to over half a million people across Australia’s Greater Newcastle region. Community engagement is a critical component of Hunter Water’s ongoing water security planning process, which will set out how the Hunter Valley will manage water for the next 30 years.

Hunter Water used Ethelo along with a robust in-person engagement process to include people in an online discussion that revealed the community’s collective priorities. Ethelo data gave the Hunter Water team confidence that they have a solid understanding of resident perspectives, which will help them make a better plan that the community can wholeheartedly support.

1216
Participants

73%
Support

Clare Hogue

Community Engagement Coordinator

As the climate continues to change, water security is an issue that’s front of mind for governments everywhere. It’s a big topic in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, Australia—where water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. Hunter Water, the community’s state-owned water provider, has been working on a plan to ensure the region has sufficient water supplies for a sustainable future.

Community engagement has been a big part of creating that plan. Over the past three years, Hunter Water’s Community Engagement Coordinator Clare Hogue and her team have used various methods to consult with residents, including online surveys, forums, drop-in sessions and a community liaison group.

“It’s about how water is going to be supplied to our community in the future, and it’s important that people understand the various benefits and costs associated with each of the options we were considering,” Hogue explains.

She adds that polarization amongst residents has been a big challenge during the consultations, as it is for many communities.

After the COVID 19 pandemic struck in early 2020, in-person engagement became a challenge, and online surveys weren’t cutting it. So Hogue went looking for a way to engage and educate people online that also helped reduce polarization. She found Ethelo.

“Ethelo is much more dynamic visually and allows much more complexity in how we’re approaching the community and getting their feedback than a straight online survey with Likert scale responses,” Hogue notes.

Getting a clear picture of community views

The Hunter Water team used Ethelo to get feedback from residents on seven preliminary portfolio options they had developed based on their previous engagement efforts.

“We asked people for their preferences about water security packages and relative bill impacts, combined with what they supported across the seven portfolios,” Hogue says.

“Ethelo helped people trade-off levels of investment as well as program and project objectives. So they understood how choosing one option over another impacted the program more widely. It gives a clear picture, and we could have more certainty that the information we were getting was a true reflection of their views because they were really well informed.”

She adds that Ethelo was one part of a mixed-method approach her team used. The trends found in the Ethelo data were similar to outcomes from the previous work, giving her team confidence that they fully understood the community’s views.

“You can have more information in Ethelo than in any other program I’ve seen. So you can feel your respondents are well informed when they participate,” she adds.

Hogue notes that the Ethelo team went the extra mile to set up the engagement and ensure everything ran smoothly.

“It was complex—we made lots of changes and had many different discussions about ways to approach it,” she says. “Everyone at Ethelo was really responsive and amenable.”

Building a better plan with lower cost

The Hunter Water team is using the data on community perspectives they got from Ethelo to inform their ongoing water security planning work.

Hogue says that the solid understanding of community priorities they got from Ethelo will ultimately help make a better plan that the community can wholeheartedly support.

“We can build and develop our plan with a good understanding of the community’s priorities,” she says. “It’ll only make the plan better, and when we have it finalized and put it out on public exhibition, we can say, ‘We really did listen, and this is how we’ve incorporated your views.’”

What’s more, Hogue says doing online engagement with Ethelo saved Hunter Water money compared to the in-person engagements this kind of consultation would otherwise have required.

“Ethelo offered a way to get a lot of detailed information out there and get feedback in an online environment, which was a lot less expensive than it would have been to do it face-to-face.”

Clare Hogue

Canada’s 2035 Climate Targets

case-study — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 01:39:14 +0000

Engaging Canadians on 10 Year Climate Change Targets

Ethelo collaborated with Environment and Climate Change Canada to conduct a nationwide public engagement, gathering perspectives on Canada’s climate future. This process aimed to inform the federal 2035 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, a milestone under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act and the Paris Agreement.

11,000
Participants

>22,000
comments

Canada is experiencing significant impacts from climate change, with national temperatures rising at twice the global average rate. This warming has led to more frequent and severe weather events, such as the devastating wildfires in 2024 that emitted approximately 8.6 billion tonnes of CO₂ globally, with Canada being a major contributor.

In response, the Canadian government has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45–50% below 2005 levels by 2035, aiming for net-zero emissions by 2050.

Achieving these ambitious targets necessitates active citizen engagement to ensure policies are both effective and publicly supported. Recognizing this, Environment and Climate Change Canada initiated a public engagement process in February 2024 to gather input from Canadians and Indigenous peoples on setting the 2035 emissions reduction target.

Challenges

Engaging thousands of Canadians across the country in a user-friendly manner that encouraged high completion rates among a highly polarized audience.
Providing relevant but succinct background information to enable informed decision-making by participants.
Ensuring platform accessibility for people with different levels of technology access and familiarity, as well as English and French versions.
Providing transparency around feedback received while managing sometimes harsh or inappropriate comments.

Solution

Ethelo’s platform enabled a highly interactive experience for participants. ECCC staff provided rich high-quality background information which the Ethelo platform was able to make accessible to those interested in learning more, without overwhelming those who wanted a fast experience.

The platform was rigorously tested for accessibility before launch and bi-lingual versions were provided.
Participants from diverse demographics, including representation from urban, rural, and Indigenous communities, shared their views through structured surveys and qualitative responses.
Ethelo’s comment moderation tools helped to streamline the removal of inappropriate comments.
Ethelo’s data validation helped ensure the integrity of the process by removing duplicate votes and spam responses.

Results

High Participation: Nearly 11,000 participants and over 23,000 comments provided rich data.
Diverse Demographics: Significant input from various communities across Canada.
Valuable Insights: Majority support for ambitious climate targets and federal leadership, with barriers identified such as accessibility of green products and government incentives.

Demographic Analysis

Ethelo gathers a broad range of information, including voting, comment, demographic and participation information. This data was analyzed to provide specific insights and comparative analysis of different groups with respect to different issues. For example, barriers to climate action were evaluated across different age groups, genders and geographic areas. Participants’ assessments of the adequacy of Canada’s efforts to address climate change were assessed from the perspective of different provinces.

AI Analysis

Ethelo used advanced AI techniques to conduct a detailed sentiment analysis of the comments. The analysis involved categorizing comments based on support for climate action, emotional tone, and general sentiment towards climate change.

Sentiment analysis of 23,523 comments revealed a deeply engaged public with diverse and often polarized opinions. Overall, 48% of comments were negative, 34% positive, and 18% neutral. Key themes included climate policy, environmental protection, and economic concerns. Emotional tones were dominated by frustration (46%), hope (19%), and concern (13%).

Key Themes:

Climate Policy: 40% of comments, primarily critical and frustrated.
Environmental Protection: 19% of comments, with a mix of hopeful and concerned tones.
Economic Concerns: 12% of comments, mainly negative and concerned.
Denial and Conspiracy: 10% of comments reflected denial or conspiracy theories, showing skepticism towards climate change narratives.

Deeper Insights:

Support for Climate Action: Most support aligned with ‘Urgent’ and ‘Aspirational’ sentiments, while opposition was heavily tied to ‘Denial’.
Impact of Climate Efforts: Negative impacts were predominantly economic, while positive impacts were mostly environmental.
Open-ended Comments: Climate policy and environmental protection were the most common themes, with critical engagement often linked to frustration, and productive engagement showing a balanced mix of concern and hope.

Impact

This engagement provided Environment and Climate Change Canada with actionable insights and demonstrated public support for stronger climate actions. Ethelo’s platform proved crucial in handling large-scale participation across all provinces of Canada, ensuring data integrity, and presenting clear, actionable outcomes.

Conclusion

Ethelo’s successful engagement with Environment and Climate Change Canada highlights its capability to manage complex, large-scale public consultations, providing valuable insights that shape national climate policies.

“I’m glad this survey exists, as it’s important for Canadian citizens and organizations to give their feedback. I just hope the government tries new ideas to curtail emissions and promote Canadian innovation with the release of the new net-zero targets.”