Climate Action Network Australia (CANA) is Australia’s largest organization, bringing together climate advocacy groups across the country. It is currently led by Chief Executive Officer Glen Klatovsky. The organization’s head office is located at 20-40 Meagher Street, Chippendale, NSW, 2008, Australia, and it can be contacted by email at info@cana.net.au.

With more than 150 nonprofit members, CANA aims to bring together groups working to reduce emissions and boost community resilience to climate change. Established in 2000, its vision is ‘A fair and sustainable Australia free of climate pollution, where people and nature are protected from dangerous climate change.’ (2022/23 Annual Report, p.5). The network has been a pioneer in strengthening and uniting climate advocacy across Australia for more than two decades. For example, in 2003, CANA’s climate justice program notified Australia’s largest corporations of their legal duty to deal with climate change risk while simultaneously producing a strategy to address climate change (‘The Real Way Forward’) with 18 other large environmental organizations. By 2009, the organization had grown to 65 member groups and played a pivotal role in progressing national, state, and local climate action by advocating as the peak non-governmental body on climate change in Australia. By 2022, the organization received $6,513.443 in annual income and was supported by almost 15 full-time equivalent staff.

CANA seeks to address climate change by building and enabling channels and forums to unite its members. It manages different programs for building collective power, including 11 issue-specific working groups, overseeing a small grants program, and supporting two standalone climate initiatives. The first is Solutions for Climate Australia, which engages in political advocacy towards all federal political parties seeking commitments and action to slash climate pollution this decade. The second is Better Futures, a network of partners amplifying climate work that is already underway. It brings together public and private sector leaders to scale success stories and demonstrate Australia’s readiness for an ambitious national response to climate change.

CANA disseminates its results each year in an annual report, which measures its results using a variety of metrics. The volume of grants measures the Small Grants Program, which dispenses to groups that enable diverse communities to lead on, participate in, and speak for action on climate change. In 2022/23, it provided AU$103,000 in funding to 14 organizations. CANA also measures the impact of delegations to critical events such as COP27, submissions on government policies, participation in leader retreats, and presentations to members through ‘Brown Bag Lunches.’ Solutions for Climate Australia recently reported achievements in coordinating monthly joint briefings and engagement between climate organizations and politicians and engaging in advocacy such as coordinating open letters to Australia’s biggest fossil fuel polluters and presenting to the Safeguard Mechanism Legislation Committee. Better Futures Australia measured its 2022/23 impact through its success in co-hosting the Renewable Energy Storage Target Parliamentary Forum, which secured a $10 billion federal budget allocation for renewable energy storage. It also established the Nature-Based Solutions Working Group and engaged in global partnerships such as the Alliances for Climate Action and UN Race to Zero Accelerators.

Figure 1: CANA member constituencies: 2022/23 Annual Report, page 26

As Australia’s largest climate network, CANA has extensive linkages across organizations in multiple sectors, as shown in Figure 1 above. As a Board Member of a CANA member organization (The Commons Social Change Library), I also have some professional linkages with people in the organization.

This post was submitted by Australia Country Manager Dr Robyn Gulliver.