Our Story
Our History
In 2020 the Scottish Government following a review of the Climate Challenge Fund carried out consultations with community groups and agencies in Scotland into proposals to create a network of Climate Hubs. The aim of the Hubs was to support communities to take climate action through support, capacity building and collaboration. As part of this process organisations were invited to submit both their thoughts and proposals for how a Climate Hub could operate in their area.
Our now Chief Executive Officer, Joan Lawrie who at that time was Development Manager for Thurso Community Development Trust (Thurso CDT) brought this to the attention of her Board. Thurso CDT, founded in 2018 had taken an approach of widespread community engagement to identify community needs and was using sustainable development goals to address those needs with strong climate action focused projects in the community including the Climate Challenge Funded, Thurso Grows Community Garden.
It was therefore agreed by Thurso CDT to submit a proposal to host a Climate Hub covering the North Highland area and the Orkney & Shetland Isles. A regional approach was required and it was felt that area could be better represented by a North Highland based organisation than one in the southern reaches of Highland. The proposal outlined the success in terms of community engagement, the relationships across the region and the holistic approach to climate action and community need, particularly in addressing inequalities, Thurso had taken.
Fast forward to Summer of 2021 and Thurso CDT were invited along with Aberdeen Climate Action to form the first two Climate Hubs as a pathfinder programme. This created the North Highlands & Islands Climate Hub and NESCAN Hubs respectively.
We launched in September 2021 under the parent organisation of Thurso CDT and quickly established ourselves as an organisation who are proactive, dynamic and representative of our grassroots community organisations across Highland and the Northern Isles of Orkney & Shetland.
In 2022 due to the success of our reach and establishing ourselves organisationally across the North Highlands we found that to operate as truly representative of the region we should both establish a membership base and become independent of Thurso CDT. In April 2022 the North Highlands & Islands Climate Hub CIC was formed as a legal entity to enable this independence and we began collecting a membership across the region.
The success of this work led to a request for us to increase our coverage across all of the Highland Council area and while we recognised the challenges of that wide geography, we also recognised that Highland in terms of the community sector is a close community and the relationships already in existence from Lochaber to Caithness were strong. We decided to rise to the challenge and in December 2022 rebranded to become the Highlands & Islands Climate Hub.
Throughout this journey our values remain the same. We firmly believe in the power of communities in addressing the climate crises. Our communities throughout Highland and the Northern Isles of Orkney & Shetland are are innovative, bold, resourceful, vibrant and our culture is intrinsically linked to our landscape and environment. Long before we had social media ‘influencers’ our community leaders and lead organisations were, and still are influencers in their communities. We have seen at times of need in recent years that these same community organisations are those which take on the challenge of caring and supporting the most vulnerable in their communities and are now best placed to support the emerging challenges of climate change and our already changing climate as we reach for a just transition to net zero.
Our role, back as we proposed in 2020 is to support the communities of our region through skills, capacity building and resources and to provide them with a voice in this multi faceted and changing world in which we inhabit. Being bold and ambitious for the communities and members we represent and fostering themes of collaboration, partnership and inclusion to take climate action across the region.
