To tackle climate change and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, local governments can partner with organizations and entities from across the public, private, and civil society sectors to plan and implement climate action. These partnerships play an instrumental role in advancing climate mitigation efforts, as they bring together skills and resources and enable collective action. Research shows that local governments that use a partnership approach achieve greater progress on achieving their community climate goals.

The Community Partnerships for Equitable Local Climate Action guide was created to provide Canadian municipalities with best practices for structuring partnerships. It was created as part of the Municipal Net-Zero Action Research Partnership (N-ZAP) based on data collected from 12 partnerships comprising 55 total partners across Canada.

The guide gives recommendations on how to design (or improve) partnerships for effective community-wide climate action, including step-by-step guidance between formation, planning, implementation and evaluation. It also emphasizes the importance of equity in climate action and offers evidence-based ways to embed equity and Indigenous engagement in community-wide climate action. Accompanying these recommendations are stories of real-life examples from participating Canadian partnerships.