How can we make climate change easier to understand, discuss and act upon? DigiClimAct shows that the answer starts with people, the places they know and the conversations that connect them — with digital technology helping those conversations travel further.
Climate change is global, but we experience it locally. A hotter summer, a street struggling with heavy rainfall, a neighbourhood with too little shade or a familiar green space changing before our eyes can make an issue that often seems abstract suddenly very real.
This was one of the starting points for DigiClimAct – Climate Action in South Baltic Cities Goes Digital. Working across Poland, Lithuania and Sweden, the project explored how participatory approaches and digital tools can make climate communication more tangible, accessible and action-oriented.
For BISER, the project confirmed an important principle: effective climate communication should begin not with technology, but with people.
About DigiClimAct
DigiClimAct was an EU-funded project implemented within the Interreg South Baltic Programme, bringing together partners from Poland, Lithuania and Sweden. Its focus was on digital tools for climate communication and citizen engagement, supported by workshops, training activities and practical experimentation. DigiClimAct success story
Throughout the project, partners worked with municipalities, NGOs, academia, civil society, young people, climate professionals and local activists. This cross-border cooperation made it possible to test approaches in different social and institutional settings and identify methods that could be adapted and reused across the South Baltic region.
Start with a place people know
One of the project’s strongest lessons was remarkably simple: climate communication becomes more meaningful when people can connect it to their own surroundings.
Through activities such as Jane’s Walks, participants stepped outside meeting rooms and looked at familiar streets, buildings and green spaces through a climate lens. These places became starting points for conversations about heat, heavy rainfall, urban development, resilience and climate adaptation.
Combined with Climate Fresk, which helped participants collaboratively explore the causes and consequences of climate change, the activities created a journey from observing climate change locally to understanding the wider system behind it.
This shift matters. During local activities, participants moved from discussing global trends to asking concrete questions about flooding, hotter summers, changing urban spaces and the future of their own neighbourhoods.
Technology with people at the centre
Digitalisation was an important part of DigiClimAct, but the project demonstrated that technology alone does not create meaningful participation.
Digital solutions are most useful when they grow out of genuine questions, experiences and conversations. This principle guided the exploration of immersive technologies and digital communication, including the development and testing of the DigiClimAct climate chatbot concept. Rather than replacing human interaction, technology was explored as a way to make climate knowledge easier to access and to extend engagement beyond individual workshops and meetings.
The project also experimented with immersive environments, 3D city models, VR and AR. During activities in Gdańsk, for example, participants explored digital representations of Sopot and considered how different parts of the city could be affected by climate change. A post-workshop survey found that 90% of participants considered the activity both inspiring and educational.
From experience to a resource others can use
Now the experience gathered through DigiClimAct has been brought together in the DigiClimAct Digital Handbook.
The material takes users through a practical climate-communication journey: Discovering Climate, Understanding Systems, Co-creating Solutions and Going Digital. It combines methods such as Jane’s Walks, Climate Fresk and stakeholder co-creation with opportunities offered by digital climate communication.
It is designed to make the project’s experience useful beyond the original partnership. Municipalities, NGOs, schools, universities, educators, community organisations and climate professionals can draw on the methods and adapt them to their own audiences, places and climate challenges.
Explore the DigiClimAct story
For BISER, DigiClimAct has been a journey from local observation to understanding, from understanding to dialogue, and from dialogue towards action.
The project did not search for one perfect digital solution. Instead, it showed the value of combining different approaches: observing what is happening in real places, understanding climate science, involving communities, co-creating responses and using technology to extend participation.
The lesson we take forward is clear:
Start with real people and real places. Help people understand the connections. Create solutions together. Then use digital tools to make that engagement travel further.
We invite you to discover the DigiClimAct success story and explore the material developed through the project. Whether you work in a municipality, NGO, school, university, community organisation or climate initiative, it can provide inspiration and practical ideas for making climate communication more participatory, relevant and connected to everyday life.
Climate action becomes easier to understand when it starts close to home. DigiClimAct shows how local knowledge, participation and digital innovation can help turn understanding into meaningful engagement.
