CLIMAR Working Groups – Update
Posted by Emma Lamb
17 July 2026Some CLIMAR members will be aware through Working Group meetings that the leadership team has taken stock of the Working Groups and how they function. The Movement Building and Systems Change Working Group, and the Systems Thinking and Complexity Working Group both felt (and at around the same time!) that their scope should be adjusted to face inwards as well as outwards, supporting the other Working Groups with their work.
After the policy brief deadline (end of July):
- The Movement Building and Systems Change Group will help to ensure that the seven core Working Groups know their respective audiences and stakeholders, ensure key messages from the Working Groups are refined, and also identify fruitful communication channels to amplify this messaging.
- The Systems Thinking and Complexity Group will adopt a foundational role, assisting the seven core Working Groups to integrate their discussions within complex adaptive systems thinking, support them to identify all inputs, drivers and levers in their respective systems, and help them with Complex Adaptive System mapping if needed.
You can see the new structure on our website here https://climar.org/working-groups/, and read the respective new Terms of Reference for these Groups here and here.
What does this mean for the other Working Groups?
After the policy brief deadline has passed, there will be some extra activity that runs parallel to the core working Groups.
The Movement Building and Systems Thinking Group will issue a brief survey about key stakeholders and key messaging, building on the work that CLIMAR has done with Skating Panda on network impact, to gather information and put together as a complete as possible a picture of these two areas. This information will then be workshopped at a Working Group leads summit in late Autumn. Working Group members, do keep an eye out for this survey!
The Systems Thinking and Complexity Group will hold an online workshop concerning complex adaptive systems, open to all Working Group members. In this they will communicate what is meant by Systems Thinking; feature some short, flash talks, and share a preliminary systems map of AMR, which can then be used as a starter to trace climate change connections, and establish intersecting themes, goals, and concerns, with an eye to assisting the Working Groups in interrogating their own part of the AMR-CC system. More information and timings will be sent around to Working Group members in due course.
In time, we hope that this activity will a) provide real ground-rock support to your Working Groups in terms of systems thinking around your areas, and b) hone and project key messaging that comes from them.