Wider Impacts & Co-Benefits

Actions to adapt to or mitigate climate change often have wider social, economic and environmental impacts.

For example, tackling energy efficiency by improving insulation can have local benefits through developing job opportunities and supply chains, economic impacts from reduced fuel bills and health benefits through improved living standards.

Recognising and integrating co‑benefits enables local authorities to maximise the tangible impacts of climate action by aligning it with wider community priorities. When co‑benefits are understood and embedded into decision‑making, climate actions become more effective, more affordable and more widely supported.

Wider impacts analysis is increasingly important in policy development. It brings new information to support policy decisions within public and private organisations. In a more holistic approach to policy making, it allows the consideration of other possible impacts of policies beyond the initial intended effect. It also helps stakeholders to avoid seeing climate action as separate from other development priorities; the challenges of climate change are inextricably linked to other global and local economic, social and environmental challenges. The apparent dichotomy between climate action and prosperity is a false one.

Aether has experience in linking the wider impacts of climate actions to other national strategies (e.g. economic, social and environmental) and Sustainable Development Goals.  Aether has compiled a wider impacts database, including scoping studies on current and future research and location specific studies. You can read about the development of the database here, and see some interactive outputs here.

Aether’s approach

Through our experience built up across multiple wider impacts projects, we have created an efficient and effective approach to analysing co-benefits. We combine desk research with stakeholder engagement to produce useful and engaging outputs.