The Climate Conversations Community Engagement Fund (CCF) is a Welsh Government grant launched in 2022 to extend Wales Climate Week (WCW) engagement into local communities.
It supports local organisations to run events during or shortly after WCW to explore solutions for tackling climate change. Organisers were asked by the fund to explore a set of open questions, alongside a pre-event questionnaire about participants’ perceptions of climate change and share a report with the findings.
We were commissioned by the Welsh Government to analyse insights from the 2024 CCF event reports. In 2024, WCW centred on “Adapting to Our Changing Climate”. The fund supported 69 events, and this analysis draws on 62 reports, representing 3,787 participants.
Our analysis revealed a variety of insights including details on participants’ level of knowledge and awareness around climate change, as well as emotional connection, before and after events. Participants expressed a desire for support finding ‘opportunities’ presented by climate change, and adaptation discussions often blended into mitigation. The findings also highlight recommendations for building resilience and enabling greater public agency in decision-making.
This research will be used to inform future decision-making and delivery of the Climate Adaptation Strategy for Wales, as well as to deepen understanding of people’s views on climate risks and their perceived ability to protect themselves and their communities. p-down and bottom-up analysis).
Most participants felt they knew “a fair amount” about climate change (42.1%), while just 3.5% knew “nothing”, though a lack of climate awareness was still identified as a major barrier to action. Participants called for stronger education, improved local media coverage, and in some cases cultural change away from consumerism. Concern about climate change was high, with over a third “very worried” (37.7%), while only a small minority (5.5%) were “not at all worried”.
Participants highlighted significant barriers to climate action, viewing climate change as a long-term emergency requiring immediate, practical adaptation. Flooding was the dominant concern, and many felt unprepared at both household and institutional levels. A recurring theme was the need for self-sufficiency, alongside strong support for locally driven, inclusive and community-led responses.
Participants sometimes struggled to identify concrete opportunities and adaptation discussions often blended into mitigation. Education and empowering communication were seen as essential to building resilience, particularly through hopeful, solutions-focused messaging and greater public agency in decision-making.
