VINCI Facilities Blog: Building private and public partnerships to deliver climate action

In November 2022, VINCI Facilities posed this topic to an audience at the County Councils Network’s Annual Conference. We wanted to connect the issue of climate change with all members of society and the tools we use to reach a broader audience.

County local authorities are a major customer for VINCI Facilities and connecting with them is invaluable in increasing our understanding of their aspirations, messaging, and policies. It enables us, as their supplier, to achieve their desired outcomes and overcome their biggest hurdles. That’s why we work with the County Councils Network and support its annual conference.

This year we focused our discussion on climate change and driving social value and debating how all of us, solutions providers like us, politicians and society can make where we live, work and play a better place. We assembled a strong panel of experts: Dr Chris Shaw (Climate Outreach), Cara Kennelly (Ridge Partners), and Cllr Sam Corcoran (Cheshire East Council and CCN Climate Change Spokesperson). They facilitated the session, where participants identified immediate hardships such as the cost-of-living crisis, energy crisis, and food poverty as taking precedent in societies psyche. However, climate change is intrinsically linked and deserves incisive action.

The basis of our discussions used an evidence-based toolkit designed to support any organisation that wants to engage the British public on climate change and developed by Dr Chris Shaw and his colleagues at Climate Outreach. He had one key slide all conversations returned to that demonstrated the segmented groups we are dealing with and their attitudes to Climate Change. The slide is here, embedded in our blog and you can see a video of it being discussed here.

The toolkit provides an evidence-based, shared, and strategic understanding of the British public and, against a backdrop of growing concern about polarisation, identifies ways to engage across the whole of society.

The irony that the audience were mainly made up of ideological groups was not lost, and therefore the question was posed; how do we reach the disparate groups identified within the toolkit, such as the Disengaged Battlers, the Disengaged Traditionalists, and Loyal Nationals?

• We make climate change a topic of conversation between our peers, colleagues, and friends.
• We discuss how climate policy and the economy affect people’s lives
• We take personal responsibility

To find out more about how we can combat climate change across society, click on the following links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTWgxMIuH0s or go to https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change.

Laurena O’Brien

Business Development Manager for VINCI Facilities