A tool for creating climate co-benefits
in your community.
The Framework for Long-term, Whole-system, Equity-based Reflection
Many climate policies have the potential to produce other co-benefits, but they won’t by accident. People need a framework to inform policy design that will generate co-benefits and ensure they are equitably distributed. FLOWER is a visual tool developed by the multisolving program for community discussion and engagement about how to implement climate investments for multiple, equitable benefits.
FLOWER is composed of a center representing long-term, global benefits of the investment or strategy being considered. Six petals surround the center, representing categories of immediate, localized co-benefits of climate action. While solutions that protect the climate have the potential to benefit everyone in a community equally or even to be targeted at groups that have historically been marginalized or disenfranchised, such distribution doesn’t happen by default. To bring the issue of distribution of benefits into the forefront of thinking and strategy, the FLOWER diagram requires people to think about it by representing that distribution in the shading of the ‘petals’.
There are three options for shading in a FLOWER diagram. Uniform shading means that, by and large, the benefit is shared equally amongst a community. If the benefit is targeted at marginalized groups (say a solar job training program for people without a high school diploma),the outer edge of the petal is shaded more intensely. If the benefit is concentrated in the hands of people who are already privileged (say for an electric vehicle incentive that is only available to those able to spend a significant sum on an expensive car), the petal is shaded more intensely in the center

Use the resources below to make a FLOWER diagram for each strategy your group is considering, and discuss any small changes in strategy that could deliver more co-benefits.
Seeing with new eyes
There are always trade-offs when trying to realize varying degrees of different co-benefits. FLOWER can’t reduce those dilemmas for leaders or communities, but it can provide a visual aid and inspire better, more generative conversations.
We hope that FLOWER will inspire you and those you work with to ask important questions about your work, such as:
- Can the strategies you invest in produce additional benefits?
- Are the benefits equally distributed or fairly shared within and across groups?
FLOWER is customizable to fit your needs. Use it to facilitate your most important conversations about how to address climate change in ways that build a better world.
As we grapple with problems (both local and planetary) created by seeing the world as divided into competing groups of people and disconnected chunks of nature, we hope FLOWER will contribute to making the world more whole, healthy, and equal.