Across the South Baltic region, climate change is no longer something that can be discussed only in reports or strategies. It is visible, tangible, and increasingly present in everyday life—through flooding, storms, heatwaves, and changing coastlines. And yet, despite the urgency, one challenge continues to stand in the way of effective action: communication. The knowledge exists. The data exists. The strategies exists. But they do not always reach people in ways that are understandable, relevant, or engaging. The DigiClimAct project began with this gap in mind. Not as a technological initiative, but as a process of exploration—an attempt to understand how climate communication could become more accessible by starting with people and their lived experiences. What followed was not a linear project, but a gradual evolution of ideas shaped by conversations, observations, and shared learning. The DigiClimAct Digital Handbook is the result of this journey.
At the beginning, there was no chatbot, no predefined digital solution, and no fixed methodology. Instead, there was a simple assumption: if digital tools are to support climate communication effectively, they must first learn from real people and real interactions. This belief shaped the project’s “learning-by-doing” approach.
The first steps took place outside, in the streets and public spaces of cities like Sopot (Poland) and Lund (Sweden). During Jane’s Walks, participants moved through familiar environments, talking about climate change not as an abstract concept, but as something connected to specific places. Questions emerged naturally, often rooted in personal experience: Why is this area flooding more often? What has changed over the years? What might happen in the future?These conversations revealed something fundamental. People engage more deeply with climate issues when they can relate them to their own surroundings. Climate change became less about global narratives and more about local realities. But the walks did more than raise awareness. They generated something essential for the next stages of the project: authentic questions, stories, and perspectives.
As the project progressed, the focus shifted from experiencing climate change to understanding it. Workshops and Climate Fresk sessions provided space for participants to explore the complexity of climate systems. Through collaborative exercises, people began to see connections—between causes and consequences, between local actions and global processes. These activities strengthened systems thinking and encouraged dialogue between participants. At the same time, they exposed an important limitation. While highly effective, such workshops require facilitation, preparation, and physical presence. Their impact is significant, but their reach is limited.This realisation marked an important turning point. The project began to ask not only how to engage people, but how to extend that engagement beyond the moment—how to make it accessible to more people, in more places, at any time.
Parallel to these activities, the project engaged a wide range of stakeholders—municipalities, NGOs, researchers, and civil society organisations. These discussions added another layer of understanding. It became clear that climate communication is inherently diverse. Different audiences require different types of information. Some need simple, clear explanations to begin their journey. Others look for detailed data, policy context, or technical insight. There is no single narrative that works for everyone. This diversity challenged the project to think differently. Any future solution would need to be flexible, adaptive, and capable of responding to different needs.
By this stage, the project had gathered a rich body of knowledge—not in the form of datasets or reports, but in the form of lived experiences, questions, and insights. This was the moment when the idea of a digital climate assistant began to take shape. Importantly, the chatbot was not conceived as a replacement for human interaction. Instead, it was understood as a continuation of the participatory process—a way to carry forward the conversations that had already taken place. It would allow people to access information, ask questions, and explore climate topics in a way that reflects the diversity and authenticity of the project’s earlier stages. In essence, the chatbot became a digital reflection of the project itself.
The creation of the Digital Handbook emerged alongside this process. Rather than simply documenting activities, the handbook translates the project’s experience into a practical and transferable framework. It shows how participatory engagement can lead to digital solutions, and how those solutions can, in turn, support and scale further engagement. It captures the full journey—from listening to communities, through interactive learning and stakeholder collaboration, to the development of an AI-based tool. At its core, the handbook demonstrates a simple but powerful idea: effective climate communication is not built in isolation. It is built through interaction, iteration, and adaptation.
What makes the DigiClimAct approach particularly valuable is the relationship between the handbook and the chatbot. The handbook explains the process—how to design engagement, how to collect insights, and how to translate them into meaningful outputs. The chatbot extends that process—making knowledge continuously accessible and adaptable to different users. Together, they form a connected system where offline and online engagement reinforce one another. Community experiences inform digital tools, and digital tools help sustain and expand community engagement.
The impact of this approach goes beyond the project itself. For municipalities, it offers a way to move from one-time consultations to ongoing dialogue with citizens. For organisations and educators, it provides methods to connect learning with innovation. For communities, it creates new opportunities to engage with climate topics in ways that are relevant and accessible. Most importantly, it shows that digital solutions are most effective when they are rooted in real human experience.
The DigiClimAct Digital Handbook is therefore more than a guide. It is an invitation. An invitation to rethink how we communicate climate change. To start with listening rather than explaining. To treat engagement as a process, not a one-time activity. And to use technology not as a starting point, but as a way to extend and strengthen what begins in real conversations.
