Universities have a "critical role" as local civic actors in knowledge-sharing, fostering collaborative partnerships and active engagement with other stakeholders to advance effective place-based climate action. 

It's one of five key findings from the ESRC-funded Place-based Climate Action Network (PCAN), which ran from 2019 to 2024. PCAN brought together academic partners from the University of Leeds, Queen's University Belfast, the University of Edinburgh and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), who collaborated with local authority partners, other public sector organisations, the private sector and the Third Sector through local climate commissions.

PCAN supported and produced three core climate commissions in Leeds, Belfast, and Edinburgh, and inspired a network of more than 15 similar climate partnerships around the UK, from cities and counties to an entire region (Yorkshire and the Humber). It also established platforms on finance and adaptation, and invested £400,000 through a flexible fund in other place-based research and engagement activities.

Lessons learned over the five-year period were:

1. Climate commissions must have comprehensive understanding of power dynamics, governance structures, leadership representation and strategic tactics
2. Mobilising financial support for place-based climate action presents complex challenges.
3. A focus on collaboration for net zero must be maintained in the face of conflicting organisational needs and the inclination to adopt a critical stance.
4. Attention to aligning and integrating adaptation and mitigation is needed for effective place-based climate action, rather than balancing a range of siloed initiatives.
5. The collaborative engagement of university staff with local authorities as peers in the civic space has been pivotal in driving impactful climate action. 

PCAN produced two flagship reports, Enabling Place-Based Climate Action in the UK: The PCAN Experience (2021), and Trends in Local Climate Action in the UK (2021), and contributed to a report on Adaptation Finance. It also published a suite of Net Zero Carbon Roadmaps for Leeds, Edinburgh and Belfast, a volume of Climate Commentaries, a Climate Commissions Cookbook and accompanying animation, and a book, Addressing the Climate Crisis: Local Action in Theory and Practice.  

It consolidated and shared learnings through an online mini conference on the climate praxis in 2020, and a national conference at the Royal Society in 2023, as well as hosting the PCAN Podcast and contributing to several workshops and roundtables.

Download the final report below.