Finding your roots: Exploring Green PB

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Here, Francesca Lynch, Development Manager at SCDC, explores the expanding world of green PB and launches PB Scotland’s new Green PB resource.

This year, SCDC added Green participatory budgeting to its ever-expanding portfolio of PB activity. I joined the SCDC team on secondment in January 2022 with excitement and trepidation. Tasked with exploring and building a new Green PB programme I grasped my challenge with both hands and hit the ground researching hard all things green.   

Being relatively new to the climate change landscape, the more I researched the more I questioned whether Green PB was really a new concept or simply a realisation and acknowledgement of what had already been happening.   

The more I learned, the more I saw strong connections to how PB activities, for years, had been having a direct and positive impact on climate change.   

Something new?

Think about all the community gardens/allotments that have been funded through PB, activities which have seen recycling at the heart of them such as swap shops or even the numerous local cycling initiatives encouraging young people to get on bikes that are refurbished or donated.    

These are at the heart of what Net-Zero activities look like. So, why didn’t I find any evidence that this had been acknowledged or recorded? Is it because maybe it hadn’t been thought about before, the link maybe hadn’t been made or was not strong enough? Or maybe we had never acknowledged PB as a driver for change in this Green Context?

Until now! Green PB has the same fundamental processes as any other PB activity so should we really be looking at it as a whole new concept? Or perhaps we should simply recognise it in a different context and using it as – one of many - drivers that enable climate change and contributes to a just transition to net-zero.

It’s still a way of including people in deciding how local money is spent, but one which produces green impacts and gets people talking and learning at a local level about climate change - and steps that could be taken that would be beneficial to them, their communities and ultimately the planet.  

Laying the foundations

A key starting point is recognising and acknowledging how much has already been achieved by communities without consciously thinking about it in a climate change context and build on this work.  We need to use Green PB as a way (and term) to start conversations about climate action without it feeling too big or scary to tackle.  Let’s start identifying the benefits in a way that is understandable and tangible to people, so that they see how their involvement has and continues to change our future prospects and actions. 

That has certainly been part of my learning journey in Green PB so far, one that many discussions with local community and environmental groups have solidified.   

Looking ahead

Once we start to talk about Green PB more commonly, people will begin to understand how small changes and projects can impact their immediate lives and communities, but also their carbon reducing legacy and therefore the overall climate agenda. 

Can Green PB encourage more people to think about their actions and copy others?   

I certainly hope so! And we will be here recording and acknowledging Scotland’s Green PB journey towards a net-zero future and the contribution we have all had and continue to have in the future.