Submitted:
02 September 2020
Posted:
03 September 2020
You are already at the latest version
Abstract
This paper reviews research on community efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We conducted a systematic search of relevant literature and supplemented our findings with an analysis of review papers previously published on the topic. Results indicate that there have been no peer-reviewed experimental evaluations of community-wide interventions to reduce greenhouse gases involving electricity, refrigeration, or food. The lack of findings limits the conclusions which can be made about the efficacy of these efforts. As a result, we are not accumulating effective interventions and some communities may be implementing strategies that are not effective. We advocate the funding of experimental evaluations of multi-sector community interventions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such interventions would attempt to engage every sector of the community in identifying and implementing policies and practices to reduce emissions. Comprehensive multi-sector interventions are likely to have synergistic effects, such that the total impact is greater than the sum of impact of individual components. We describe the value of interrupted time-series designs as an alternative to randomized trials because these designs confer particular advantages for evaluating strategies in entire communities.
Keywords:
systematic review
; community intervention
; greenhouse gas emissions
; climate change
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
