Saint Paul Engages Community and Tracks Sustainability Progress through Climate Action Dashboard

The City of Saint Paul adopted the Saint Paul Climate Action & Resilience Plan in 2019 as a framework for achieving carbon neutrality in city operations by 2030 and citywide by 2050. The plan outlined an ambitious and comprehensive group of targets and actions to decrease emissions in every sector of the city – however, Saint Paul lacked a centralized platform for reporting on the current state of those targets and actions.

In 2022, the City of Saint Paul began designing a new web-based tool that could serve as a clearinghouse of information on the widespread efforts being undertaken by the city and its partners in pursuit of Climate Action & Resilience Plan goals. The Saint Paul Climate Action Dashboard was launched in April 2023 and continues to evolve as the city embarks on new projects and programs to mitigate the impacts of climate change in an equitable and inclusive manner.

Project Approach

Saint Paul’s approach for developing the dashboard concentrated on bringing clarity, transparency, and accountability to climate goals. The dashboard was designed to align with the focus areas within the Climate Plan, therefore the platform is divided into six main categories:

Each category includes a range of actions from the Climate Plan, and each action is assigned to a primary city department and lists a staff point of contact who is responsible for tracking progress on that action. The organized layout of Saint Paul’s Climate Dashboard makes it clear to internal and external audiences which city department is leading efforts and tracking progress for each climate action, thus holding the City of Saint Paul accountable for all of its climate goals and providing transparency to the community when actions are behind schedule.

Additionally, the City of Saint Paul intended for the Climate Dashboard to be used by a variety of audiences, so content is purposely written in plain language with technical terms and acronyms defined in a glossary to help users decipher the dashboard’s information.

Outcomes & Measuring Success

The comprehensive format of the Saint Paul Climate Action Dashboard allows for city staff, elected officials, partner organizations, and the broader community to get an overall snapshot of Climate & Resilience Plan progress.

The dashboard also provides a more detailed view of Saint Paul’s progress since many of the actions include “indicators,” which are quantified measures of the outcomes and impacts of those actions.

In the first eight months after the Climate Dashboard was launched, the site has had over 6,000 visitors and more than 19,000 page views. Its effectiveness and impact were noticeable to city staff, as elected officials accessed it regularly to learn more about climate efforts, community groups and residents used the site to explore topics of interest or obtain points of contact within city government to reach out to with questions, and members of the media relied on the site to provide background information for stories about climate-related work within Saint Paul.

As the city undertakes the first update of its Saint Paul Climate Action & Resilience Plan during 2024, the Climate Action Dashboard will continue to evolve as a useful tool for tracking progress toward climate goals, identifying projects and programs in need of more support, and inspiring the Saint Paul community to continue fighting for meaningful climate action.

LINKS:

Saint Paul Climate Action Dashboard

Saint Paul Climate Action & Resilience Plan