“CARBONCARE INNOLAB – Climate Community Dialogues” Hong Kong

Country

Hong Kong

Keyworld

Community; collaboration; multistakeholder dialogues

Level:

Meso

Meso

Main result

Participative dialogues

Title

“CARBONCARE INNOLAB – Climate Community Dialogues”

Date

Founded in 2014, CarbonCare InnoLab (CCIL) is an NGO dedicated to nurture and expand the active communities, focusing on the youth and students in Hong Kong, and encouraging them to mitigate climate change and develop sustainable low-carbon lifestyle through innovation, education, and action.

Carbon Care Inno Lab puts special emphasis on multi-stakeholder engagement and solution-oriented processes, as well as awareness-building across the community engaging all the population’s components and sometimes focusing their activities and dialogues on matters concerning older adult citizens.

An example of an “older-adults dedicated dialogue” was the “Climate Community Dialogues of 2021”, an event during which was analyzed how elderly people are the most impacted by the heat waves, but they get little to none support in finding relief.

Objectives

The NGO’s website describes some of their main objectives as it follows: “It seems that public concern for action on the climate issue is static, and in some cases being displaced by more immediately felt social issues. Some people turn away from the issue, while others accept the seriousness of the changing climate but feel hopeless in the face of the complex interplay of issues involved”.

Another aim of the good practices implemented by CarbonCare InnoLab is to engage the young and the elderly together in order to establish dialogues and mutual help between these two parts of the population.

One of the main approaches of the NGO is community engagement, education and awareness practices and “linking talents” that is making possible for everybody in the community to take part to the dialogues getting to know more and new interesting people.

Location /geographical coverage

Hong Kong

Address: 18A&B Seabright Plaza, 9-23 Shell Street, Fortress Hill

The geographical range in which the NGO works is mainly within the borders of Hong Kong central city, with the aim to engage in the “Climate Dialogues” the population and the older-adults-population living alone and that could potentially suffer from an heat stroke due to the poor ventilation and poor airflow in the subdivided units of the building blocks (typical over-populated building architectures in Hong Kong) .

Organisation responsible for good practice

The NGO “CarbonCare INNOLAB” through its events, programmes, open dialogues, and fundraising activities.

Stakeholders and partners

CarbonCare Innolab has different targets within the whole Hong Kong population; the most active parts of the population in the activities and in the events are the youth and the students but even the elders are involved in the dialogues or in the fundraising activities of the NGO.

Short summary

During the 2021 “Climate Community Dialogues” held in November the whole

activity was oriented to the following topic: “Extreme weather hit hard welfare and health care workers and the vulnerable people”, including in the latter category also the older adults.

One of the first matters discussed regarded the fact that more protection and

training were perceived as needed for both welfare and health workers so that they could better adapt to climate change and be fully equipped to support vulnerable people and the elders suffering from heat strokes or heat-related issues. The need to connect university researchers, medical practitioners was also discussed, as the importance of enabling regular sharing of data and information from the research on the relations between extreme weather and health. This will help the community gain a better understanding, tracking and research updates of the health impacts of climate change, especially in relation to vector-borne diseases, cardiovascular diseases and mental illness or general fatigue issues mainly related to the older-adults population.

In conclusion, climate change impacts have been escalated and emerged as an

imminent social threat, rather than simply an environmental threat, that the Hong

Kong communities are facing.

Impact

On the written reports produced after the event, it is reported that the whole

population who took part at the Dialogues wanted to be part of other dialogues in the future, appreciating the format and highlighting the need to be heard and to feel part of a caring community.

After the Dialogues held in November 2023 more than 7 other Dialogues-activities were held from then till now (February 2024).

The engagement of the first aid-responders and the engagement of the healthcare workers was perceived as positive and these categories of workers took part also in other Climate Community Dialogues.

Innovation

One of the main steps towards the production of good practices was producing

knowledge on the topic of the hazards of heatwaves, having multiple targets: not

only the youth or the students were the main characters in the Dialogues but also

health professionals and older adults.

Another positive and constructive result was making the elders feel cared and

checked-on by the whole community of Hong Kong.

Lessons learned

The first key message elaborated during the dialogues was the following: “Climate change has widespread impacts on welfare sector, while the community members are suffering from extreme weather and therefore bearing a higher health risk. However, so far only 9 out of the 494 institutional members of HKCSS (Hong Kong Council of Social Services) attend to climate change issues. There is an urgent need to better understand the climate impacts on welfare sector and therefore their role and capacity in providing necessary support, particularly for those front-line welfare and health care workers who are taking care of the disadvantaged every day”.

Sustainability

Since the whole good practice implementation just described relied on an NGO

group’s initiative, a far more involving and engaging way to check on elders and to promote knowledge on heatwaves accidents and casualties could be organised and supported by the “Community Care Services” unit of the Hong Kong administrative Region (which has an already well-organized website).

Replicability and/or up-scaling

The NGO’s good practice is community-engaging, having as target groups not only students and the youth but also young professionals, teaching institutions and the older adults population.

To further upscale the initiatives of the CarbonCare InnoLab, the NGO had already involved since its early beginnings a whole list of participants coming from various realities such as: The Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation, the Christian Concern for the Homeless Association, the St. James' Settlement Wan Chai District Elderly Centre, the Hong Kong Society for Community Organization, the Hong Kong Red Cross, the Institute of Future Cities, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Central and Western District Council and the Clean Air Network.

Contact details

Adress: 18A&B, Seabright Plaza, 9 Shell St., Fortress Hill, Hong Kong

Phone: 3568 2244

Fax: 3590 3775

Email: info@ccinnolab.org

Website: www.ccinnolab.org

The whole list of the project team for the November 2021 dialogues is published

within the following lines:

• Dialogue Designer and Chief Facilitator: Alissa Tung (Programme Director)

• Deputy Facilitator: Thierry Leung (Senior Social Worker, Programme

Manager), Natalie Sum (Senior Programme Officer),

• Blaire Ho (Programme Officer),