Table 2 Key barriers and facilitators to climate change action faced by sustainability professionals
From: Sustainability professionals’ roles in advancing action for climate change and sustainable cities
Key themes | Barriers | Facilitators |
|---|---|---|
Individual | ||
Knowledge skills | Complexity of scenarios, data projections, uncertainty; | Knowledge sharing, tools, guidelines; |
Lack of business case and financial tools; | Capacity building | |
Lack of knowledge & skills | ||
Intervention skills | Lack of influence | Communication and awareness; |
Collaboration skills | ||
Contextual | ||
Leadership, champions and community support | Apathy, someone else’s job; | Leadership; |
Lack of political leadership; | Community support; | |
Lack of community support | Experiencing impacts | |
Strategic and organisational | Management or structural issues; | Interdisciplinarity, collaboration; |
Risk aversion; | Organisational culture, values, reputation; | |
Sustainability as an add-on; | Integration into business as usual; | |
Complexity; | Systemic approaches; | |
Competing priorities or attention; | Strategic thinking; | |
Adaptation vs mitigation; | Long-term approaches | |
Short-termism | ||
Resources | Limited capacity and resources; | Targets, allocation of resources; |
Competing cost and sustainability | Aligning economic and environmental goals and outcomes | |
Market | Lack of consumer demand | Demonstration of climate change approaches to encourage uptake |
Regulation | Lack of policy and regulation | Regulation, finance, risk management |
Technical: materials and practices | Unsustainable materials and practices | Sustainable design and materials |
