Stories of Impact: Climate Parliament

Each month, we speak to a close partner of Climate Policy Radar to ask them about their work and how our tools and databases accelerate their mission. This month, we spoke to Lucy Pearson, Executive Director of Climate Parliament, an international multi-partisan network of legislators working to combat climate change and protect the living planet. Climate Parliament facilitate discussions among legislators, renewable energy experts, and stakeholders to share best practices and develop actionable recommendations. The ultimate goal is to empower MPs with the knowledge needed to actively support governments to adopt more ambitious climate policies.

Lucy, thanks for joining us. Can you tell us about Climate Parliament’s current focus?

Well, our chief purpose is to work with cross party members of parliament globally, but we focus mainly on work with the Global South. Our aim is to inform and inspire action on climate, which we do through a number of capacity building and educational initiatives. We also bring in investors, renewable energy developers together with a broad range of other non-state actors, leveraging the convening power of parliaments to drive forward progress on the region’s energy transition. 

You’ve been working with Climate Policy Radar for a few months now, what has that looked like?

CPR came and ran a training session with us and will do another one very soon to help the team understand how we could use the tools and databases to their best advantage. It was a really good time to do this because our team has grown in the last 6 months, so we now have CP reps across Africa, Asia and Europe, bringing the number of countries we now operate in to 19.

The team use the CPR app now in mapping exercises to research and identify the framework landscapes for mitigation and/or adaptation policies across our regions. Some of our strongest impacts come from peer to peer learning and capacity building- so having a strong dataset underpinning that is a really key component of that. In particular, the CPR database is a fountain of case studies which are very easy to find, which is of great assistance in building strong workshop packages.

And how else does the CPR app help you accomplish your goals? 

Pulling together the compendiums of case studies straight from the CPR app really shaves down the time it takes to do our work. But it’s not just about the time saving.  Our reputation is built on credible, verifiable and reliable advice. When you use the CPR app, you know that you’re using a reputable resource. That accuracy to us is key. There are other AI models out there that one could use, sure, but you're not guaranteed the accuracy - especially when you drill down on the references that other AI platform draw from.

Thank you so much Lucy, we’re really looking forward to seeing the progress Climate Parliament makes on this vital work!