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
Climate Protection
The center of the FLOWER diagram represents the long-term, global benefits of the investment or strategy being considered. Shading in this part of the diagram represents strategies that reduce CO2 or other greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane or nitrous oxide, and actions that boost the carbon-sequestering potential of ecosystems.
Climate Protection
Energy Industry & Mobility
Shading this petal means the investment or strategy brings people secure access to energy, the ability to make things they need, and the ability to get around. From bringing small scale photovoltaic energy to remote villages in developing countries to providing public transportation access that helps people get to work and school, some investments that reduce emissions also deliver the benefits of access to reliable energy sources.
Energy Industry & Mobility
Resilience
Some investments build people’s capacity to survive or even thrive in the face of disruption. A subset of the investments that will protect the climate in the long-term can also help communities adapt to unavoidable climate change in the near-term.
For example, conservation of wetlands can sequester carbon and help prevent flooding. Investments in renewable energy infrastructure can build resilience by diversifying the energy mix.
Resilience
Food & Water
If this petal is shaded, it means that the investment or strategy being examined increases access to healthy food and clean water. Projects that restore degraded lands or create urban farms would show a benefit in this petal, as would water efficiency programs or land conservation programs, which increase nature’s power to purify and filter water.
Food & Water
Jobs & Assets
The investments represented by this petal provide meaningful work at a living wage and build assets in a community. Energy efficiency retrofits or renewable energy infrastructure installations that provide good jobs are examples of the types of investment that produce these co-benefits.
Jobs & Assets
Health, Well-Being & Safety
Shading in this petal indicates that an investment improves mental, physical, and emotional well-being and creates safe conditions to live and work. Investments that make communities more walk able or bike-able or any policies that reduce the impacts of dirty energy on air quality are good examples of the possibilities in this petal.
Health, Well-Being & Safety
Connection
This petal is about the powerful mindset needed for human survival on a planet fraught with environmental challenges, war, and injustice. Shading of this petal means that a project or investment leaves the people who encounter it feeling more connected to their own sense of unique potential, to the needs and humanity of other people, and to the living systems human beings are embedded in.
Connection
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.