When communities most affected by climate change lead, better solutions emerge for everyone.
The Climate and Equity Lab works alongside communities pushed to the margins, those who contributed least to climate change and bear its heaviest burden, to understand what systemic support their work needs, and to build the evidence that makes the case for change.
Communities are already innovating.
Across Canada’s urban centres, communities are building practical resilience strategies grounded in lived experience and mutual support.
Image credit: East Scarborough Storefront
Research validates community knowledge.
Community knowledge doesn’t need research to validate it. But the Lab’s growing evidence base is bearing it out — community-led approaches consistently produce more equitable and durable outcomes than top-down solutions.
Systems need to catch up.
Existing policies and funding structures too often leave community-led resilience unsupported — deepening the impacts on those least able to absorb them, and squandering the opportunity to learn from what communities are already doing well.
Image credit: FoodShare Toronto & Flemo Farm