Mapping Out Our Future: Using Geospatial Tools and Visual Aids to Achieve Climate Empowerment in the United States

Abstract

Urgent climate action is now impeded less by doubt that the climate crisis exists than doubt that we can do anything meaningful about it. Vivid stories of climate successes and geospatial maps showing the impact of such successes are the best way to meet this challenge. Accelerating climate solutions in the United States thus now turns on stories, maps, and other analytic and visualization tools to help achieve what the United Nations has termed climate empowerment, the “all-society” effort to mobilize all people of all nations to understand, gain the capacities for, and take the actions needed to save our planet and each other. In this chapter, we look at two types of narratives—those in the form of geospatial tools and images that help nonspecialists see and understand climate dynamics and distributional impacts of the climate crisis, and interpersonal solution stories that act as resources to help motivate collective climate action. Illustrative and analytical geospatial tools support community members in shaping climate action and environmental planning efforts, and help to ground climate adaptation processes in geographically specific data. In combination, these storytelling tools carry people over the entire arc of climate empowerment.

Climate empowerment is “[T]he capacity of peoples to see and achieve the changes necessary to reverse climate change, heal our planet and save all we still can, in ways that also lay down the conditions for a livable future…”—United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

The Power of Maps and Stories

The disasters so long predicted for our future are now our present (Hansen, 2009; Myers et al., 2021). The climate catastrophes bursting upon us are felt around the world, their cost inescapable. Temperatures, multi-year droughts, famine, storms, sea level rise, and ever-greater numbers of people dying in violent conflict or compelled migration continue to set record upon record (Holland & Bruyère, 2014; Knutson et al., 2020; Mitchell et al., 2016; Samora-Arvela et al., 2017). As if the daily images of desperate people wading through waist-deep flooding in the aftermath of storms were not enough to bring home these dangers, a recent study found that for every degree of increase in average global temperature, there is an 25–30% increase in the proportion of “catastrophic” category 4 and 5 hurricanes (Holland & Bruyère, 2014). Monsoons are way out of season, too intense, or not showing up at all. Polar ice is melting under summer skies as hot as if in a temperate zone, even as in winter the temperate zones of Earth find polar air currents bringing deep, freezing storms lasting weeks way to the south of where they belong. Fires roar across whole continents, burning forests, animals, and vegetation and destroying millions of acres, homes, and lives. Skies unbreathable and seashores cooking shore creatures by the billions, corals bleached, and the deeper oceans threatened by heat, acid, and eutrophication (Cheng et al., 2021; Koutsoyiannis, 2021).¹

The news comes through each day, unrelentingly, of current and projected damage to our fragile planet from climate change,² and for many who let themselves listen, the news brings grief, erosion of hope, and loss of agency. At the same time, for many such news redoubles their determination, even outrage, and gives them even sharper focus on finding and scaling the many solutions we do in fact already have. Overall, there grows a miasma of distraction, overwhelm, grief, and despair or, perversely, continued outright denial, even as the climate chaos is worsening faster and more visibly than scientists had dared predict . And on every continent, “sensitivity” to this chaos defined as “the susceptibility of a system or population to harm from exposure to climate-related threats,” grows rapidly, hitting hardest those least resourced to handle it (Cutter et al., 2009).³

Paths to Climate Empowerment

People need to act to use the climate solutions we already have, or are now finding. In order to act, we need to believe that the actions within our power to take matter. Ideally, we need to see that our actions are not just helpful, but even necessary, and that, taken together, the actions of us all, or enough of us, each doing our part, might yet prove sufficient to get us out of the mess we’re now in. In this chapter, therefore, we focus on those uses of stories and mapping that help get us to climate empowerment. We treat climate empowerment itself as a climate solution in need of acceleration through the abundance of solution stories, coming from many directions, and mapped out concretely and at different levels of scale.

Using stories to achieve this goal is not a matter so much of more or different kinds of stories, it’s rather that sharing the stories of solutions is a matter of spotlighting the agency of those making these solutions happen. Some stories turn on the—what they did, how they got there, where their courage came from, what help they required, and from whom, and what strategies worked, and how they kept going. We need to take that approach with enough different kinds of answers in enough diverse geographical, environmental, and demographic contexts, that hearers can gain not only new direction from the stories, with new ideas as to what can and should be done in their unique community, but new courage to take action as well.

If we’re focusing not just on what needs to be done, but on what people find themselves able to do, then we have to ask, “What counts as a ‘climate solution?’” It’s a different question from “What can we do?”—with the often-implied rhetorical notion, “Nothing,” to the question, “Of the things I can or could do, which if any of them could actually make a critical difference, i.e., could actually count as a ‘climate solution?’” Such situations are on all sides now, of course, as we are now in what is really a planetary crisis, including though not limited to climate. It is in fact a systems’ problem, the likes of which our human species has never seen before. Almost every single aspect of our lives is somehow implicated. But that also makes us all part of the solution—or potentially so—given good answers, the power to act upon these answers, knowledge of these answers, and belief in our power to act upon them, even take them to scale—given, that is, climate empowerment.

To Accelerate Climate Solutions, What Kinds of Stories Do We Tell, Map, and Show?

• 1. Answer the urgent question, “What can we do?” with vivid stories of success. Show what the solutions are. Show how they work and why they matter, the good they do, and how they came about.

• 2. Tell where current impacts and projected impacts of climate change are particularly high, along with where current actions are, with accurate, complete, and continuously updated geospatial mapping tools and images that pinpoint where the actual breakthroughs are happening so all can see for themselves what is happening on the ground.

• 3. Use these tools and connections to help changemakers find each other and to amplify the voices of those most affected by the crisis—to hang out, help out, learn from, share with, and work together, both locally and globally, in all the ways and with all the problems we face.

• 4. Where feasible, use the stories, maps, tools, and processes to visualize how solutions connect and interact, to better see the interdependencies and how real systems change, within and across all sectors, is actually emerging already, or is at least possible. Use maps to sketch what it would look like if the solutions we find were to be in place or to imagine what, in time, it would look like if they were still not in place. Use maps and geospatial modeling and analysis to see vividly before us the different futures to come someday from the plans and possibilities that we are weighing on this day.

• 5. Tell the stories of what real people close to home are doing about the climate crisis, often in surprising numbers, finding fulfillment and essential companions while making meaningful contributions to sustainability work. Use interactive maps to provide opportunities and resources for local collaboration and involvement.

• 6. Show how those newly or long-time aware of the climate crisis and its vast threats and losses cope with the strains and the changes in their lives and make sense of our situation. Focus on the growing millions of people not just at risk but already enduring the full impact of planetary breakdown, dying or seeing all that they need and know gone forever. Tell stories that show how we can in fact plan globally, as well as locally, for all “4 R’s” of resilience: readiness, rescue, recovery, and, where needed, relocation; how we share power in both framing and making the decisions that shape our futures; and how we share our hearts as one human family.

• 7. Tell of the many, some half a world away, now meeting regularly on Zoom, learning from each other of promising answers and finding potent leadership from ordinary people around the globe.

Stories to Accelerate Climate Empowerment

Climate empowerment as we define it at the beginning of this chapter suggests a process of discovery and development occurring over time. As envisioned by the UN, this process is to be optimized in each party to the Paris Agreement by the six elements of educational and participatory intervention that their Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) program specifies (UNFCCC, 1992). In arriving at this conclusion, however, we’ve also seen the diverse ways to help people with different needs and situations. These approaches, summarized here, can be clustered as ones of social support; comprehensive mapping; and effective action. The starting point for all, and the first step toward climate empowerment, is awareness of the severity, the urgency, and the magnitude of the climate crisis.

Social Support

“Circles” of support arise spontaneously and informally as people seek each other out, while more organized networks and methods are also coming into being (Hogan, 2021).⁴ This social connection is essential as is the storytelling that elicits feelings and models actively sharing them, not suppressing or setting them aside. In this way, storytelling also builds communities of practice for solving localized challenges.

Comprehensive Mapping

Letting go the burden of the whole and settling for just our own part can be made much easier if among the images and stories are some that connect the dots, helping make sense out of all that needs doing, and showing where and how the climate solutions needed for the other parts are indeed accounted for. What such communities require is a big picture: Working through smaller pieces while being able to see the whole is helpful in understanding what it is overall that we are aiming for.

Effective Action

Taking meaningful action, participating in real-world efforts, and seeing their successes mapped out can radically turn around our sense of the possible in a moment. It is this instant expansion of the possible, as well as the concrete direction stories offer, that puts storytelling at the heart of climate empowerment.

Stories show the magnitude of what is in fact possible. They can show the extraordinary breadth, complexity, and diversity of actions all over the world, at every level of scale, and social standing. They can be a curative to overly narrow or even dogmatic notions of what must be done and how, opening vast inventories of “adjacent possibilities” within and across every aspect of society. This diversity then is another of the reasons that stories, maps, and images are so pivotal. The climate crisis is so overwhelming not only because it is so big, but because it is so complex; it leaves nothing untouched. It seems beyond imagination how anything with so many facets and feedback loops could yield to even our biggest actions.

In describing climate empowerment, it is no accident then that the UN said it must be an “all-society” approach (UNFCCC, 1992). All systems, all sectors—connecting within and between them for the health of all—is a goal for how climate empowerment can manifest. In seeking to “mobilize all,” it is not for all to become “climate activists” as such—walking off their jobs and into the streets. It is rather, or in addition, the way to the deeper transformations needed become clear, for us all to embed climate action into every aspect of every place, job, situation, network that we are part of anywhere. As one put it, “don’t just create green jobs, make all jobs green.” Reassess every policy, tool, rule, role, code, norm, behavior, process, structure, reward system, expectation, necessity, performance, recreation to see what changes to it—or preservations of it—are most vital in achieving near-term survival and foundational to a long-term livable future.

The Equalizing Power of Geospatial Tools

Tobler’s First Law of Geography states that “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things” (Tobler, 1970). This pattern can be seen reflected in residential demographics. Yee (1996) discusses the tendency of individuals belonging to the same racial or ethnic minority group to form “ethnic enclaves” in the form of hyper-segregated neighborhoods. While it is common around the world for people to choose to live in neighborhoods that are home to others who share similar racial and socio-economic attributes, there are also many “ethnic enclave” neighborhoods that exist as a direct result of oppressive power structures and discriminatory zoning laws (Rothstein, 2017). Robert Bullard, who is considered to be a founder of the Environmental Justice Movement, asserts that this form of neighborhood segregation, which he labels “residential apartheid,” is a product of decisions made by “white slaveholders, merchants… and the white business elites, politicians, and workers in the periods since slavery” (Bullard, 1993).

Today, neighborhoods and city regions in the United States that are home to predominantly Black and Brown people, and neighborhoods that are predominantly home to low-income people, are disproportionately impacted by extreme heat events, natural disasters, flooding, and a host of additional threats associated with climate change (Wilson et al., 2010; Hoffman et al., 2020). When discussing climate empowerment and equity-oriented planning for climate change adaptation, it is necessary to name the histories of systematic oppression that have played into current disparities in vulnerability to the threats at hand. The US government has a long history of decision-making that has resulted in economic, social, and political violence toward groups of people not considered to be white or wealthy that dates all the way back to the inception of the country (Cooper et al., 2011; Krimmel, 2018; O’Connell, 2012).

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Home Owners’ Loan Act into law, establishing the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in hopes of rectifying mass foreclosures and economic struggle following The Great Depression (Greer, 2013). Although the intention behind the HOLC was to promote economic equity and growth, the HOLC’s profit-driven design was rooted in returns rather than human well-being. This being the case, the HOLC constructed a series of “Residential Security Maps” of selected US cities, as can be seen in Fig. 1, breaking cities down by neighborhood and assigning each a grade based on perceived investment risk for banks. Neighborhood grades ranged from A (shaded green on the maps) to D (shaded red on the maps). A-grades represent the lowest level of perceived neighborhood “blight,” i.e., investment risk, and “redlined” D-grade represents the highest level of perceived risk (Nardone et al., 2021). This investment risk was determined largely by the presence of non-white people in a community, the presence of recent immigrants, and a range of additional population characteristics indicative of socio-economic status (Greer, 2013). The HOLC, as well as most private banking and real estate companies at the time, relied on these Residential Security Maps for residential, commercial, and industrial lending decisions (Jackson, 1980). Redlining practices have been shown to preclude heightened neighborhood segregation, limit generational wealth-building, and exacerbate long-term poverty cycles (Taylor, 2019). The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned redlining, but many discriminatory lending and urban planning practices continued on in less explicit terms, leaving legacies of their own (Jackson, 1980; Taylor, 2019).

Fig. 1

Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Residential Security map, sourced from the University of Maryland’s T-Races project

Neighborhoods that were home to discriminatory zoning and lending practices are now associated with present-day reduced green space, higher percentages of residential segregation, lower average income levels, and fewer economic and housing opportunities (Taylor, 2019). Beyond the disinvestment seen in formerly redlined neighborhoods, investment in environmentally detrimental development was simultaneously being encouraged by a number of federal initiatives, including programs incentivizing the construction of major roadways and buildings in low-income neighborhoods of cities (Wilson et al., 2020). Major highway and building development projects involve materials such as metal, concrete, brick, and other heat-retaining, impermeable materials that exacerbate heat (Namin et al., 2020; Pearcy, 2020). Vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, such as extreme heat, flooding, and natural disasters, is associated with the high proportions of impermeable land surface cover and reduced greenspace found today in formerly redlined neighborhoods (Hoffman et al., 2020; Nardone et al., 2021; Voelkel et al., 2018).

Government-sanctioned economic and land-use policies rooted in prejudice have not only been causal forces in creating place-based disparities in vulnerability to climate change, but their legacies have also taken the form of widespread hindrances to wealth-building that will likely prohibit many individuals from being able to move to a different city or neighborhood as climate conditions worsen (Hoffman et al., 2020; Namin et al., 2020; Gutschow et al., 2021).

It is critical to understand how discriminatory historic land-use policies have shaped modern disparities in climate change vulnerability and economic mobility if we are to move forward in a way that prioritizes repairing systematic harm in our fight for climate empowerment. Geospatial methods have been employed to facilitate the creation of unjust urban landscapes, as was the case with the HOLC’s Residential Security maps, but these tools have also been pivotal in pinpointing environmental inequities and place-based differences in the built environment in order to center equity in current grassroots and governmental interventions. Geospatial tools may now be harnessed for equity-oriented urban planning around climate change, and to facilitate community-driven knowledge creation and communication around climate action.

How Even Good Intentions Sometimes Go Awry

Even the best of plans driving equity-centered climate change adaptation planning can have disastrous results if the interventions themselves are not developed and carried out in a manner that centers community empowerment. Ecological gentrification is a recurring problem here and a striking example of how poorly executed climate justice interventions can have harmful consequences for the very communities they were designed to benefit (Rice et al., 2020). In expanding green space in low-income neighborhoods with histories of systematic disinvestment and marginalization, and many Black and Brown or other residents of disenfranchised communities, planning agencies or entities can inadvertently cause quick and even extreme increases in local property values that drive out local low-income renters. In situations such as these, the ecological and esthetic benefits of the green infrastructure expansion can end up available only to the much better off, moving in, or able to stay behind and handle the higher rents or increased property tax costs. While not sufficient in completely preventing these free-market housing dynamics, climate empowerment approaches, including community-driven environmental planning processes that give a strong voice to all who are affected, go a long way to finding better solutions. No one knows a neighborhood’s needs, wants, and realities better than the people who have made it their home for years, or even generations.

Stories can inspire, explain, and model the understandings and patterns of impact and justice that we need when addressing the climate crisis, and can effectively communicate their complexities. Maps do something else. Maps ground our stories like no other media—the when, where, who, and how—connections between peoples, places, and events; parts and wholes, ideas and resources, histories, scenarios, and choices. They situate narratives, memorialize grief, and give solid underpinnings to aspiration. Misused, they can sharpen division, conflict, and oppression—hardwiring human divisiveness. But put in service of life, of healing, transformation, and redesign, maps—like music and other images—can cut through barriers of language and shyness with shared seeing, pointing, even with fast action. By giving visualization and thus voice to the needs, concerns, aspirations, creativity, and mutual interdependence of all affected by high-stake decisions, maps go a long way toward making such decisions participatory and potentially wise, just, and inclusive. Accountability and justice are at the heart of the climate movement, and geospatial mapping is the storytelling tool of choice in supporting both.

How Will These Redesigns and High-Stake Decisions Be Made, and By Whom?

Community-driven collective action, along with far-reaching policy changes that emphasize regulation, culpability, and accountability for fossil fuel companies, is most needed. Mapping technologies offer a promising path toward shifting our collective mentality away from individual choices, helping us both contextualize current geographic disparities in vulnerability to climate change and recognize larger patterns of connectedness in climate empowerment narratives. Maps can help individuals visualize where they fit into their community’s network of action and drive, and promote cohesion. Geospatial tools facilitate the connection of common threads of action, such as we saw with the Santa Cruz Climate Action mapping project. Carried out using participatory mapping to mobilize masses in a unified manner, such mapping initiatives have the potential not only to inform planning efforts, but also to bolster energy to push for tangible change and accountability that may reach all the way up to the corporations largely responsible for the climate crisis we now face. Unity is necessary if we are to tackle climate justice head-on, and unity can be both showcased and fostered through geospatial tools and participatory mapping initiatives.

History and Uses of Geospatial Tools

Dating back to the 1800s, maps have been used to paint a visual narrative of the distribution of benefits and burdens of both the built and natural environment in the United States. By the 1940s, scholars were already using detailed spatial and temporal data to explore trends and compile narratives around the built environment (DeBats and Gregory,, 2011). In the 1960s, computerized geographic information system (GIS) was established as a field of study and the Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS) was built (Goodchild, 2004). Since the inception of computational geographic technologies, geographic information science, or GIScience, has been a recognized subfield of information science with ever-evolving open-source and closed-source software systems for analyzing spatial patterns and illustrating place-based stories (Goodchild, 2004; Rey, 2009). Maps are accepted as intuitive, relatively universal platforms for sharing information and visualizing place-based narratives of how climate change is currently manifesting, and how it is projected to manifest.

As geospatial technologies have advanced, mapping tools have become increasingly useful for engaging members of the public with topics related to climate change, and for informing climate change preparedness urban planning initiatives. Earth observation data and machine learning techniques are now being used for hazard mapping and risk vulnerability mapping, as well as developing tools and platforms to model future risk (Albano & Sole, 2018). Geospatial technologies can be harnessed to (a) better understand relationships between built environment characteristics and climate change resiliency, (b) geographically target participatory climate change preparedness initiatives to regions most vulnerable to climate change, and (c) engage the public in climate action, centralize local expertise, and enhance community knowledge systems.

Responsible Data Sourcing and Usage

Input data are required to analyze, discern, and illustrate place-based patterns of past, current, and projected climate change impacts using geospatial tools. These data may be quantitative or qualitative in nature and can be demographic, environmental, or any combination of data classifications. For data to be represented or analyzed geospatially, the only requirement for input is that it have geographic information present, such as addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates. Compiling and analyzing place-based information, including precipitation levels, temperatures, flood damage, energy consumption, and many other variables directly related to climate change, is helpful for understanding and visualizing patterns of climate change. Outputs of place-based data compilation and visualization processes, whether in the form of maps, statistics, or interactive web-based stories, aid in communicating distributional patterns of climate-related challenges and may highlight positive and negative outliers in climate action and empowerment, all of which is helpful in strategically planning interventions for the climate crisis. Data may come from members of the public, trained scientists, or machines.

Demographic data are often used in geospatial projects to assess the distribution of social, economic, or health impacts of climate change in the United States. Data on race, income, education, age, and other factors that influence mobility, access to resources, and social vulnerability in the United States often come from the US Census Bureau (Voss, 2007).

Environmental data may be used to assess detectible environmental shifts and to communicate detected changes or distributions of manifestations of climate change. Data on climate and environmental characteristics such as precipitation, land and air temperatures, and land surface material can be found in a range of sources, many of them governmental. Depending on one’s location and which specific variables happen to be of interest, environmental data can come from a variety of sources including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other state- and region-specific organizations and agencies. CalEnviroScreen, EnviroAtlas, and the Healthy Places Index offer organized and compiled place-based information on a wide range of demographic and environmental characteristics and should be used as a resource for climate mapping work. Table 1 below details a selection of established demographic and environmental data sources. Maps and spatial statistics can be used to illustrate gaps, or disparities in either susceptibility or impact depending on population characteristics such as income, race, or any of the other demographic variables included in the US census.

Table 1 Nonexhaustive list of data sources for environmental and demographic variables related to climate justice and climate empowerment in the context of the United States^a

Vulnerability to climate change-related events, such as natural disasters, is often strongly associated with a population’s age structure. Young children and senior citizens tend to be particularly vulnerable to harm in extreme climate events, along with the disabled populations and housing insecure (Cutter et al., 2009). Demographic data can be used in geospatial analyses to better understand the geographic distribution of very young or very old individuals, and assess risk factors related to climate change. Since 2010, the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) has become the principal source for geographically specific population and economic information (Spielman & Folch, 2015). Population data at the census tract level are used frequently to tie demographic spatial data, e.g., a tract’s average income, to data on climate vulnerability, e.g., percentage of surface area covered by tree canopies. Spielman and Folch (2015) argue that ACS in particular has a very high level of uncertainty, pointing out that ACS’s estimate of the population size of children under 5 years old has a margin of error greater than the actual estimate in over 72% of US census tracts (Spielman & Folch, 2015). This reinforces the need for all data feeding into geospatial processes to be checked rigorously for uncertainty and validity.

When analyzing racial and socio-economic variables related to climate change vulnerability, it is important to note that the US Census Bureau’s classifications of race have shifted dramatically as formerly non-white racial categories have assimilated into whiteness (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). “European ethnics,” such as Irish populations, became classified as white as a result of mass international immigration at the start of the twentieth century (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). Temporal contextualization is essential when exploring how geospatial legacies of racial trauma relate to climate change vulnerability today. The racial “othering” that acted as a basis for economic and environmental discrimination has not lasted in a ubiquitous fashion across non-white racial categories, meaning that many Black and Brown communities and individuals who continue to identify as non-white bear the bulk of modern manifestations of the climate-related legacies in question.

Uses and Limitations of Geospatial Tools

Geospatial tools vary in platform design, computational and visualization capabilities, cost, and ease of use. Implications of the nature of these variations include how well the tools may potentially support marginalized populations needing greater access, on the one hand, and the power and flexibility critical, for example, in handling complex, large-scale, and quickly changing situations, such as climate disasters, on the other hand. Most geospatial tool systems allow users to integrate a geographic database with any other database, as long as the datasets have a common identifier for each item, such as a name, address, or unique identification number. This capability is very valuable for understanding the relationships between population or environmental characteristics, and quantifiable impacts of climate change (DeBats & Gregory, 2011). For example, many geospatial studies have combined housing datasets with demographic and environmental datasets to assess the distributional equity of extreme heat exposure (Hoffman et al., 2020; Wilson et al., 2020). This function can be applied to a wide range of global climate crisis challenges and can be used to work toward a safer and more just world through community-driven climate change adaptation planning.

One software company has monopolized the geospatial tool market: Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri). Jack and Laura Dangermond founded Esri in 1969 and created their first commercially available GIS product, called ArcInfo, in 1981. Esri now offers a suite of geospatial ArcGIS tools, some of which are web-based, while others are only available on the downloadable desktop software that can be used offline. ArcGIS tools aid in organizing, analyzing, visualizing, and publicizing geospatial data. With a relatively straightforward and easy-to-navigate platform, ArcGIS is extremely popular with private companies, governmental agencies, and other nongovernmental or community-based organizations. Esri also offers a StoryMap tool, which allows users to create an interactive platform through which they can supplement the maps they have produced with text, audio, photo, and video content, thus enhancing the maps’ storytelling utility.

Many geospatial analysis tools, such as Esri’s ArcGIS, have been criticized for not being sufficiently accessible due to their subscription or download fees (Rey, 2009). Esri software products can be costly, but the company has tried to enhance product accessibility. By offering steep discounts to educational institutions, governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other entities deemed worthy of subsidization, Esri has expanded its customer base and addressed many accessibility concerns (Rey, 2009). GIS technologies are now ubiquitous in nearly every field of research and continue to rapidly expand in their capabilities, as can be followed in a variety of GIS-focused journals, such as Transactions in GIS (Wilson, 2020b).

In response to criticism of closed-source geospatial tools not being inclusive enough, an influx of free and open-source geospatial tools was introduced to the circuit, and participatory approaches to mapping became popularized in both open- and closed-source mapping initiatives (Rey, 2009). Open source refers to any software for which the software and its source code are shared openly, so that anyone can recreate or modify the code (Steiniger & Hunter, 2012). Many geospatial experts argue that open-source geospatial software is inherently more accessible than its closed-source counterparts, because it is all public domain (Rey, 2009). Popular open-source geospatial tools include QGIS, GRASS, and FOSS GIS (Donnelly, 2010). InVEST software is one example of how open-source tools are being used to support climate change mitigation planning today. InVEST works by assessing benefits of green, or “natural” infrastructure by harnessing geospatial information related to the ecosystem and economic benefits of nature, and “prioritizing land use change and promoting inclusive planning” (Hamel et al., 2021).

Applications of both open- and closed-source GIScience technologies, especially participatory GIS, are being used in disaster risk reduction around the world (Cadag & Gaillard, 2012). Prudhomme et al. (2013) discuss the power of spatial modeling in predicting geographic vulnerability to drought. Global hotspots identified as being likely to experience an increase in drought frequency of more than 20% included regions in South America and Central and Western Europe (Prudhomme et al., 2013). A heightened drought frequency of this magnitude could be devastating for a region’s agricultural systems and drinking water availability. In a different geospatial study, researchers apply spatial data infrastructures (SDI) to develop a method for quantifying vulnerability to climate change in the Arctic (Bernard et al., 2008).

Several climate change adaptation efforts using geospatial tools focus on identifying specific resources influencing preparedness, including facilities and social groups (Wood & Good, 2004. Wood and colleagues (Wood & Good, 2004) bring up the fact that a population or region’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change is often compounded by other types of vulnerability, depending on the possible hazard or natural disaster. Geospatial tools allow for a better understanding of combined risks by integrating environmental and population features such as topography, population mobility, language abilities, weather, and population age structure. For instance, Wood and colleagues (Wood & Good, 2004) describe how coastal communities who are concerned about sea level rise use GIS to assess integrity of their built environment, which they break down into construction type, building code, and shoreline management planning. Coastal flood explorer tools are available all over the United States and the world, and offer viewers visualizations of what their local environments will look like, and which parcels are likely to be underwater, at a range of given sea level rise scenarios.⁵

Participatory Mapping: Tools, Processes, and Principles

The impacts of climate change on population health and well-being cluster geographically. For a wide range of stakeholders, such as members of the public, community and nongovernmental organizations, governmental agencies, and the private sector, geospatial tools have been useful in telling the stories of these clusters of environmental and public health crises and disasters related to climate change (Holland & Bruyère, 2014; Parente et al., 2016; Prudhomme et al., 2014).

Participatory mapping can stand alone as a complete process, or it can be used in tandem with a range of other qualitative or quantitative methods. (2016 Cochrane and Corbett (2020) define participatory mapping as the “creation of maps by non-expert individuals, groups and communities—often with the involvement of supporting organizations,” such as community organizations, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or universities. Participatory mapping projects are able to draw from large or small populations and provide opportunities to represent the experiences of individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. Ground-truthing uses community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods, which are rooted in collaboration between academic institutions, individual community members, and community organizations (Sadd et al., 2014). Ground-truthing research strategies can be utilized for participatory mapping projects, as long as the community-collected data include a geographic identifier. Web-based participatory mapping is a common form in the United States and globally. Web-based mapping relies on online technology, emphasizes social and environmental justice, and is designed to enhance individual and community connectedness, agency, and power in decision-making processes and public narratives.

Corbett (2009) describes the different ways in which participatory mapping can be utilized, naming the following applications: providing a pathway for communities to articulate spatial knowledge to external agencies, allowing communities to record and archive local knowledge, assisting communities in land-use planning and resource management, supporting community advocacy for change, increasing capacity, connection, and cohesion within communities, and helping to address conflict related to resource management. These applications of participatory mapping all connect readily to challenges around climate change, as can be seen in the examples to come.

A study in the Kimberley region of Australia from 2013 to 2015 exemplifies how participatory GIS research can be included in mixed-methods CBPR. Aiming to inform marine conservation planning efforts, researchers used a combination of semi-structured interviews, qualitative participatory mapping in the form of polygon marking exercises, and quantitative web-based participatory mapping exercises to assess which geographic polygonal regions’ stakeholders see as most valuable, and to compile polygon-based coastal management preferences (Brown et al., 2017). These diverse expressions of community input, in the form of geographically specific community priority regions, helped planners make coastal conservation decisions that were best for community members, and helped build trust between community members and planning authorities.

Cadag and Gaillard (2012) illustrate how participatory community mapping can be used through showcasing a disaster risk reduction project in Masantol, Philippines. In this project, community members systematically identified regions considered particularly vulnerable to hazards through manual “stone” mapping, “sketch” mapping, and web-based geospatial mapping tools such as GIS (Cadag & Gaillard, 2012). By offering various options for participatory mapping involvement, community members were to decide which type of mapping felt most appropriate and most accessible. Hand-drawn community maps can easily be transferred to online geospatial systems to share broadly and analyze for whatever purposes community members see fit, and their physical manifestation within the community can aid planners and other community members in preparing for natural disasters. Drawing on local knowledge through participatory mapping makes for more effective and robust planning for climate change adaptation initiatives. After all, who knows the minute characteristics, culture, and vulnerabilities of a space better than the people who inhabit that land? On a similar note, participatory mapping tools used to highlight action happening on the ground locally have great potential to motivate individuals to join their community members, friends, and family members in mobilizing for change in neighborhoods, parks, and spaces that are visually familiar.

Participatory and Community-Based Mapping Projects

Participatory and community-based mapping projects have a distinct set of functions, best practices, and limitations. When carrying out volunteered geographic information (VGI) projects, informed consent is always mandatory. Publicizing geographic information, particularly in tandem with volunteer names, photographs, or other identifying media, poses issues of privacy that requires informed consent based on exactly what information will be made public and how and when the media will be shared. If participants change their minds at any point about consenting to share their information or media, the organizer must immediately comply with their content removal requests.

More broadly, there are recommended practices and limitations to be aware of when using geospatial tools in the realm of climate empowerment and justice. It is important, for example, to be especially clear in setting the geographic scales of spatial data when applying geospatial tools so as to avoid visual distortions. Geographic scales of data refer to how spatial data are aggregated by region. Common scales include census tracts, cities, counties, and states. The choice of size and shape of areal aggregation schemes influence visual and statistical outcomes and have the potential to skew both study analyses and results (Räsänen et al., 2019). In other words, choosing to aggregate spatial data at one scale can result in a much different narrative than choosing to aggregate data on a different scale. This phenomenon is commonly known as the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) (Fotheringham & Wong, 1991).

Subject privacy is also of primary concern in geospatial storytelling and analysis. Unless specifically given permission to publish the names of project subjects or participants, de-identifying data points should be standard practice.

Experimenting with Mapping Tools

Climate Empowerment on the Central Coast of California

Here in Santa Cruz County, on the north end of the Monterey Bay, and with some hundreds of climate efforts and achievements among the six counties on this coast, we are in the earliest phases of thinking about how “climate empowerment” might best be realized in this bio-region. We have much in common on the Central Coast of California, our small cities strung out as they are along Hwy 1 on the tiny strip of land left between the mountains and the sea, with little and ever-lessening water and some of the most precious farming land anywhere in the nation or the world. We are passionate here about “climate,” as its crisis is bearing down upon us, burning down our Redwoods and our homes, stealing our water, and bringing lethal heat to our fields and to the many individuals laboring in them. The question is: How do we connect all this effort and focus it for greatest impact?

Much of what we’ve discussed so far in this chapter has grown out of just that quest: How might we in this bio-region best use mapping and stories to stop and reverse further climate damage, and lay the groundwork for a truly livable future? We want to use both storytelling and mapping to help everyone here raise and answer the question, “What can we do?” in all the ways climate change does or will affect them. “Everything is local,” as it’s always real people in relationships with each other, near or far, who move the world. It is upon the empowerment of “ordinary” people, that in the end a new future must be forged.

In the County of Santa Cruz, with its three incorporated cities, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, and Scotts Valley, there are between one and two hundred organizations, maybe more, with direct or indirect connections to the issue of the climate crisis. Regionally, along the Central Coast, are several hundred more, so much of the informal groundwork for a substantial regional climate empowerment effort is already well established. Formally, we also have in place MBEP (Monterey Bay Economic Partnership), C3E (Central Coast Community Energy), an emerging Central Coast Public Bank (an organization coming close to closure in their efforts to establish such a bank under California’s new public banking law), and the informal and professional connections between City Staffs and elected officials from cities, counties, and dozens of district boards as well. These bodies appreciate of the value of working closely with citizens in achieving climate action goals, even where constrained in their ability to act upon it.

The City Santa Cruz is well into a participatory process of updating its 2010 to a 2030 climate action plan, with its 2-year-old climate adaptation plan; Watsonville has a 2030 Climate Action & Adaptation Plan and San Luis Obispo, midpoint on the Central Coast and regarded by many as the leader in such efforts in this area, is well into implementing its own 2020 Climate Action Plan. There is considerable overlap in the values, agendas, and challenges among these.

Regionally, we also have three universities and eight community colleges and, of course, hundreds of citizen and student leaders, faculty, climate scientists, experienced campaign strategists, citizen journalists, community media, and associations of small business, tourism, farmers, fishers, and faith communities.

“The RE-AMP Network is a collaboration of 175 nonprofits and foundations across eight Midwestern US states … that used a systems map developed by [participants with the help of] Scott Spann to identify [4] leverage points to … [reduce GHGs by] … 80% by 2050...[These were to simultaneously]...(1) stop new coal plants from being built, (2) shut down existing coal plants, (3) increase renewable power, and (4) increase energy efficiency (Spann, S., 2012). As a result of their collaborative efforts, the RE-AMP network has helped retire over 150 coal plants, five states have implemented rigorous renewable standards, six states have adopted or approved energy efficiency resource standards, and the Network has regranted over $25 million to support strategic climate action in the Midwest.” Key to this success was that from the outset representatives from every part of the overlapping systems that together made the Midwest the most polluting part of the United States, from coal-coal users, coal companies, solar and alternative energy, and local and government college—all came together. Each helped spell out how they understood the whole system to work, while coming to trust each other across the usual barriers and appreciate the constraints and opportunities of each other’s situations. These dynamics elicited exceptional collaboration and creativity (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

A systems map of the RE-AMP network

The challenge, then, and the opportunity, is to further strengthen this network involving potentially hundreds of knowledgeable and committed climate-concerned citizens and officials and make the most out of these efforts. Our efforts so far have been particularly influenced by two models, the RE-AMP Network and the US ACE Framework.

The accomplishments of the RE-AMP program, ongoing, continue to be among the most highly regarded in the United States and among the climate “success stories” most needing to be told. It offers a model of effective strategy for systems change. Part of this strategy, the idea of bringing all parts of a system together to identify leverage points and achieve change has been picked up, branded as “Collective Action” and promoted by among others the SSIR. But in that process, a critical piece may have been dropped, one fundamental to climate empowerment as we see it, their distinctive and powerful “map and stories” technique. If we can manage the resources available, it is this element we would seek to emulate, making it fundamental to a systems approach to climate empowerment on this coast, and as a pilot of US ACE, if we can manage the resources it could take.

The UN ACE commitment, though the first to use the term, does not define “climate empowerment” on its website, but rather says this about it:

Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) is a term adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to denote work under Article 6 of the Convention (1992) and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement. The overarching goal of ACE is to empower all members of society to engage in climate action, through education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation on these issues.

In 2020, absent federal leadership, an independent group of US citizens, convened a Talanoa dialogue with diverse communities nationwide to develop an ACE National Strategic Planning Framework for the United States. In March 2021, the Biden government adopted the Framework as US Policy, appointing Frank Niepold as the domestic “focal point” to implement it. Climate Heath and Equity Partnership (CHEP) team members offered to help develop an “ACE Pilot’” here on the Central Coast. Local work described in this chapter is in part an early stage in such an effort.

In 2021, CHEP, the authors, and others in the network began to explore what it would look like for the Central Coast to pilot US ACE elements on a regional level and share what they learned. From that, effort so far has come the components listed here and the experiments, research, and reflections shared in this chapter.

Exploring Participatory Processes with Geospatial Tools and Maps

The Santa Cruz Climate Action Photo Contest

Among the first CHEP experiments focused directly on mobilizing “ordinary” people through storytelling, was the Santa Cruz StoryMap Project, which took place in the spring of 2021. Technically, the project was a mixed-media participatory mapping exercise using a local climate action volunteer geographic information (VGI) process. Socially, as an experiment in self-story-driven climate empowerment, it was set up as a photo contest with scholarship money as prizes for student entries, and “reputation” rewards for other participants.

The StoryMap project was a collaborative effort between the Climate and Health Equity Partners (CHEP), a group of activists, educators, health professionals, and scholars and the Santa Cruz Climate Action Network (SCCAN), a group with similar goals also based in the northern part of the County of Santa Cruz. Young community members were invited to submit photos they had taken relating to a climate action they had been involved in that fit into one or more of the following categories: education or outreach, environmental justice, sustainability and waste reduction, energy, transportation, civic engagement, or food. CHEP worked with SCCAN to design the survey as a contest entry form and make sure the geographic coordinates were included.

Participatory mapping has the potential to incorporate different forms of media sourced from community members, such as videos, photos, and audio, and organize the media into maps or other types of place-based outputs. Such outputs, including ArcGIS StoryMaps, create compelling and personalized narratives of climate action on the ground, or adverse climate change impacts at the local level. We wanted to see how these potentials would play out on the Coast with a small-scale model.

Thorough outreach is an important step in optimizing contribution accessibility and including participants from a wide range of backgrounds. The survey, conducted through Esri’s Survey123 platform, was distributed to all local community organization contacts available in the group, as well as a long list of administrators and teachers in the Santa Cruz and Watsonville educational districts.

The photo contest received 32 survey submissions from individuals, all willing to be included in a public mapping project. CHEP exported the survey responses, which included website URL links for the photo submissions, to a CSV file. Spreadsheets formatted as CSVs, including addresses, coordinates, or other digestible geographic information, can be directly uploaded to ArcGIS Online. In order to de-identify the photos and data points featured on the map outputs, CHEP replaced the names of submitters with random numbers, keeping the original spreadsheet with contest submission data including both names and de-identified numbers in a private and safe place. After exporting and cleaning the CSV file to include only geographic coordinates, climate action description information, and climate action photo URLs, CHEP uploaded the CSV file into Esri’s ArcGIS Online application to map the submissions. After creating maps showing the photo submissions with their locations, CHEP made a StoryMap, as a cohesive narrative on the SCCAN website.

We hoped the contest would lure in a few people beyond “the usuals,” targeting engagement from younger participants, and seeking novel takes on what counts as “climate action,” and it did. We also wanted to test out the potential impact on climate empowerment, across the many distinct constituencies ultimately to be reached, if people could, for example, see in their own “hometown,” the diverse range of climate actions already occurring there. Looking ahead, we hoped that such mapping tools and visualizations located near people’s homes, and in different places and by numbers of people, organizations, or individuals they knew or would come to know, and perhaps reach out to, as a result of similar mapping projects in the future that might be done on a larger scale.

Connecting Climate Action and Health Communities

There also exist opportunities to use geospatial tools in the future to inventory and map all of the well over a hundred climate actions and organizations to be found in the Santa Cruz area, with the hope of a more regional approach extending down the coast. Figure 3 illustrates another promising use of geospatial tools by helping to visualize how two networks, each vital to achieving climate solutions, can be so geographically mixed and yet so socially separate.

Fig. 3

A regional map showing where healthcare facilities and climate actions connect and coordinate currently disparate processes

As a foundational step toward both connecting and integrating climate and health at the community level, mapping accessible health, climate, and environmental groups, services, and locations holds great potential. Figure 3 displays the early stages of a sample map for Santa Cruz County stakeholders and prospective CHEP partners who share an interest in this type of climate and health initiative, aimed at ensuring that health facilities, health professionals, and climate advocates can readily partner and comprehensively advance community resiliency, health promotion, and robust prevention.

Similar to other counties, Santa Cruz offers a wide variety of health facilities and services to serve the public’s medical needs. Examples of health facilities that have a significant impact and play a vital role in climate and health are hospitals and county health departments. Santa Cruz County has three main hospitals and a Health Services Agency that includes primary care clinics, environmental health, behavioral health, and public health. These facilities form the health-focused data points in Fig. 3. As a foundational step toward both connecting and integrating climate and health at the community level, maps displaying accessible health, climate, and environmental groups, services, and locations hold a lot of potential.

Hospitals are often top regional employers and pillars of local economies. They are also often some of the top emitters of greenhouse gases, which both drive climate change and cause severe health impacts. Consequently, it is vital that hospital leaders and planners seriously consider and reliably implement climate-informed priorities. This is particularly the case in California, where climate change and equity are embedded in public health planning by the Climate Change and Health Equity Section (CCHES).

Given the goal of developing dynamic maps with responsive, action-oriented data points, for anyone who is interested in developing Climate and Health County- or Community-level maps, it will likely be most useful to prioritize inclusion of the health facilities and systems that are both early adopters and reliable champions for climate, health, and equity priorities. When patients, providers, families, and community members all understand these connections and apply lessons about how human health and climate are fundamentally interdependent, we can collaboratively achieve a vision of durable social and ecological wellness.

With these overarching goals setting the larger context, this chapter has focused primarily on the near term and the close to home. Couple climate success stories with the climate problems when telling of them. Thus, the first step toward climate empowerment are stories told with this intention in mind:

In considering the full range of possible impacts storytellers may seek to have different kinds of stories in different kinds of situations, we hxave noticed a pattern among possible response, their internal sense of agency, and transformations of the external conditions within or through which the concerns can be effectively acted upon. This is to say that while climate empowerment is centrally a matter of the growth and evolution of our own knowledge, compassion, and courage, it is also a matter of an increasingly potent democratization of the means by which we make and act upon collective decisions.

It is this external dimension that we focused on in the second section of this chapter, Realizing Climate Justice, The Equalizing Power of Geospatial Tools, the dimension of equity. Participatory planning, budgeting, and problem-solving are the growing edge of climate empowerment, globally, assuring that all affected by decisions have substantial say in them—and the tools and processes that will make the most of that say. We focused on one of the most promising, the appropriate use of geospatial mapping tools as these are particularly valuable in helping all peoples to see for themselves precisely the challenges that we are up against in the climate crisis, what our choices are, and the effects of these choices on all the different populations affected. Well-used and to these ends such tools, skills, and processes help assure that the external systemic or structural dimensions of climate empowerment do themselves become a core focus of the climate movement, especially for those who must never again be closed out of the very climate decisions where their own interests and even lives are so much at stake.

In the third section of this chapter, “Experimenting with Mapping Tools, Climate Empowerment on the Central Coast of California,” we also focus on the two dimensions of climate empowerment, efficacy and community. Recognizing how much any move toward climate empowerment on this Coast will depend on stories, we are inviting multiple conversations across communities that care deeply about climate change, climate justice, community resilience, and a number of related questions and causes. Listening, imagining, and mapping the many “climate success stories” already occurring helps to bolster anever-growing inventory of resources for the public to work with.

And, in all this, finally, we come full circle, a third way “through” the dilemma, living into it: acceptance without resignation; determination. Mapping tools that turn hard data into human stories, helping make just-in-time decisions. Stories at the edge of good planning, daring innovations, and mutual aid—these can bring us into alignment with the natural world, each other, our near-term challenges, and our long-term potentials.