Community Engagement for Developing Scio Township’s Environmental Sustainability & Climate Action Plan (ESCAP)

Abstract

This final report is a culmination of a team of five Master’s students partnership with the Scio Township Environmental and Sustainability Task Force. The student team worked with Scio Township’s Working Groups beginning in December 2021 and completed their collaboration in April 2023. The working group topics include: Energy and Buildings, Transportation and Mobility, Natural Ecosystems and Sustainable Food Systems, Materials and Waste, and Community Resilience and Emergency Preparedness. Each team member worked directly with a Working Group. The team determined the engagement strategies most effective for reaching key interest groups in the community to maximize participation and promote greater diversity and inclusion throughout the process to contribute to a well-developed Environmental and Sustainability Climate Action Plan (ESCAP). Community feedback played a key role in the creation of the ESCAP and will play a critical role in the plan’s implementation. The team’s facilitation of community engagement promoted the plan’s capacity to address community members’ distinctive concerns related to climate change. The team researched other relevant climate action and engagement plans to inform outreach strategies. The two primary forms of engagement undertaken for the creation of the ESCAP were a public input survey and a series of key interest group interviews.