Together for a fairer, greener future

About this report

Climate and nature issues are inseparable from people’s everyday experiences of housing, transport, health, bills, pollution, flooding and access to green space. But policymaking does not always reflect this reality.

Community knowledge is often gathered or quoted without being given real influence over policy, funding, governance or delivery. This is not simply a problem of representation. It is a problem of power.

Together for a fairer, greener future makes the case for a richer form of collaboration. One that treats communities and grass-roots organisations as partners in shaping problems, priorities and solutions, rather than simply as sources of evidence for decisions made elsewhere.

The report draws on the Everyone’s Environment Leaders programme and work with senior civil society leaders, grass-roots activists, policy professionals and people with lived experience. The research was facilitated through a partnership between NPC, Green Alliance and ACEVO.

What we found

Communities hold valuable knowledge, trusted relationships and local legitimacy. However, the systems connecting them with national organisations, funders and policymakers are weak.

The report identifies two cycles that help to keep community knowledge away from decision-making:

• The grass-roots capacity loop: Community organisations often lack the time, funding and administrative capacity needed to take part in policymaking. This leaves better-resourced organisations with greater access and visibility.
• The evidence and influence loop: Policy and funding systems tend to favour technical, written and quantitative evidence. Lived experience is therefore often used to support an existing analysis, rather than to help define the problem and shape the response.

These cycles are reinforced by gaps in accountability. Communities may be asked for their experiences or ideas but receive little information about what changed as a result.

As a result, policymaking can miss three things that communities provide:

• a richer understanding of problems and what will work in practice.
• narratives that connect environmental issues with people’s everyday lives.
• the trust and legitimacy needed to build lasting change.

Access to nature: Putting the challenge into practice

The report examines unequal access to nature as an example of the wider disconnect between community experience and policymaking.

Increasing access to nature is not only about whether a green or blue space is nearby. Communities also highlighted the importance of safety, accessibility, quality, belonging and having a say in how spaces are designed and managed.

Current approaches can focus more heavily on measurable proximity than on whether people are genuinely able to use and benefit from nature. This risks producing policies that meet technical targets without reflecting the realities of the communities facing the greatest barriers.

What needs to change?

The report proposes five priorities for civil society organisations, funders and policymakers:

• Build better pathways between community insight and policy influence. Create clear, two-way routes through which community knowledge can shape policy and communities can see what happened as a result.
• Build on trusted local infrastructure. Work with community anchors, local organisations and networks that already understand their places and hold trusted relationships.
• Move from storytelling to shared ownership. Give communities greater influence over narratives, policy asks, governance and how their experiences are represented.
• Invest in relationships and trust. Fund the time, capacity, convening and infrastructure needed for long-term collaboration and shared leadership.
• Put community power at the heart of devolution. Use emerging regional and local structures to connect environmental action with health, housing, transport, economic opportunity and reducing inequalities.