STORY OF TCAP
WHY TCAP EXISTS
The Teton Climate Action Partnership (TCAP) was created to meet a clear community need: a shared space where organizations and community members could work together on complex climate and sustainability challenges that cut across sectors and jurisdictions.
Its purpose is to provide a collaborative, equitable, and adaptive, community-wide action structure that helps catalyze projects transitioning the Teton region to a zero-carbon economy and society—while centering equity, community accountability, and real-world implementation.
TCAP’S HISTORY
In January 2020, an open community meeting on climate action was convened at the Pink Garter Theater by Mayor Pete Muldoon. Spurred to action out of that convening, on April 6, 2020, the Town Council adopted Resolution 20-05, committing to carbon neutrality by 2030. In the fall of 2020 a group of public and nonprofit actors began collaborating to catalyze climate action.
In the late spring of 2021, the climate action collaboration took shape as Teton Climate Action Partnership (TCAP) Facilitated by LegacyWorks Group with additional leadership from the JH Climate Action Collective, Town of Jackson, Energy Conservation Works, Riverwind Foundation, Sunrise Movement JH, Voices JH, and Yellowstone Teton Clean Cities, TCAP engaged 80+ community members in 10 temporary teams to identify opportunities, take the first steps toward collaborative actions, and develop a framework or ongoing collaboration. This initial organization was the partnership’s startup phase and culminated with the launch of tetonclimateaction.org in May 2022.
The partnership is now in its continuous phase. The continuous phase is an ongoing, adaptive cycle of climate action identification, equitable engagement, and impact reporting. It is guided by the collaborative framework, which was developed in the startup phase and has since been adapted to meet the needs of the collaborators. The temporary teams of the startup phase evolved into the TCAP Sector Teams. The sector team and cross-sector coordination meetings are the heart of the TCAP collaboration, and nearly everyone originally involved in the startup phase was excited to continue the work.
The accountability provided by the originally convened leaders has evolved to be more inclusive and equitable. The initiators still provide leadership by serving as team leaders and providing staff support to the partnership. They also seek to engage marginalized voices more heavily in these roles and provide more equitable accountability through public outreach intended to collect a more inclusive evaluation of the opportunities and needs for climate action.
Stories of Collaboration
The story of TCAP is a parallel plot composed of the braided narratives of the collaborators.
Thank you to all of those who have participated in TCAP.
