With start-ups, a Phibsboro climate co-op looks at ways to keep wealth within the neighbourhood

The Climate Co-op in Phibsboro has a few ideas that it is already working on.

One is a retrofitting service, says Sean McCabe, the head of Climate Justice and Sustainability at Bohemians FC. 

Another is a school meals programme based on the idea of farm-to-fork, and working with growers in north Dublin, he says.

The businesses would be the next step in the work of the football club’s Climate Co-op Team.

It’s looking to evolve its community development to revenue-generating businesses – and ones that keep the wealth that they create within the community, says McCabe.

“This is about valuing what people have to say, about co-creating climate solutions with people, and then letting the people own these solutions”, says McCabe. 

Shifting the local economy

The Climate Co-op project started as a reaction to the rock-and-a-hard-place feeling that many get as they look at the present and fast-approaching future, said McCabe recently, at the team’s offices above the Tesco in Phibsboro Shopping Centre. 

“The cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, intergenerational poverty, it would be enough to just have to solve that,” says McCabe. “Simultaneously, we’re up against the cliff edge when it comes to a climate emergency.” 

But solutions to social and climate crises are not as far apart as one might think, says McCabe. 

The Climate Co-op Team has spent several years developing a model of local climate action directly linked to community development, he says.

One that recognises, he says, that environmental action that doesn’t tackle social inequality is insensitive and ineffective.

It is an economic privilege to be environmentally active, says McCabe, and it is downright unjust to ask people to support a movement that does not support them. 

“It’'s a very human thing. People need to trust that the world around them cares, or they won't care for the world around them,” says McCabe. 

So far, its initiatives – a bike library, a community supported agriculture scheme, and a green skills programme – were set up through the Spark project, a government-funded community development initiative, he says.

But as its next step, the Climate Co-op is also looking to develop sustainable revenue streams and keep that money within the community, he says. 

They envisage a network of local enterprises that plan for the future and that are owned by the people. 

The idea, he says, is to grow local wealth, good-quality jobs and decrease the area’s climate impact. At its heart, it is community wealth building, he says. 

Community wealth building in Dublin

Community wealth building is a model of economic development coined in 2005, by The Democracy Collaborative, a US-based think-tank.

It’s a way to shape local economies so that communities keep local wealth and directly own or control assets. 

It’s an idea that has attracted the attention of municipal governments worldwide – including Dublin City Council, which reported details of a community wealth building strategy last year. 

A great benefit of community wealth building is that it is very low risk, says Austin Campbell, CEO of The Liberties Community Project.

“There doesn’t need to be a big capital investment into this model. It’s only really a philosophy that has to be applied,” he says. 

He submitted a paper to the council four years ago, asking it to implement community wealth building principles in Dublin’s south-west inner-city as part of the City Development Plan 2022–2028. 

He sees huge potential for it in Dublin 8. Community ownership of property could have a really positive impact, he says. 

His project offices saw its rent tripled last year due to rising market prices, he says. “So we had to just deal with that and pay it. Because we couldn't just shut down our community centre.”

The charity had to find new funding from the state, said Campbell. “So, it's taxpayers paying money to private landlords, and all that wealth is just leaving the area, and nobody except the land owner is gaining.”

If communities owned property – say through a community land trust  – space could be given to community organisations at an affordable rent, and profits redirected back into the area while creating a healthy ecosystem of social infrastructure, he says.    

McCabe, of the Climate Co-op project, says that community wealth building must be combined with climate action to best support a community’s development. 

“We’ve already passed 1.5 degrees celsius of the climate threshold in the Paris Agreement, which is going to require some reconstruction of our societies and economies,” says McCabe. 

Building local climate solutions with a clever strategy would also create local businesses and assets, he says. 

“We could potentially capture some of those assets and businesses, put them into the hands of the community and let the community become an engine, not only for climate transition, but for developing more equitable outcomes for all,” he said.

But how?

To prep for the Climate Co-op, Sean McCabe and his team travelled. One trip was to the village of Mondragón in Basque Country in northern Spain.

The Mondragón Corporation – based in the village – is a large-scale federation of worker co-operatives which, last year, reported 92 co-operative businesses, 70,000 members, and a revenue of €11.2bn. 

“Mondragón, which began in 1956, is probably the premier example [of cooperative businesses] in the world,” says McCabe. 

The corporation predates the coining of “community wealth building” by about 50 years. But The Democracy Collaborative credited it as a big inspiration.

For the Climate Co-op, Mondragón demonstrated “a common sense that is about caring for each other, that's about building an economy that works for people rather than people that work for an economy”, says McCabe.

The Climate Co-op Team invited members of their growing community to come on the trip, to learn too. 

“The scale of it was very impressive,” says Georgina Johnston, who has a background in climate justice studies, and regularly volunteers at the Climate Co-op.

The democratic businesses didn’t just affect work life but also created a more co-operative social life, and a positive use of third spaces, she says. 

She saw that in Mondragón’s txokos, a cross between a restaurant, bar, and social club run by its members, she says. 

“People can come and cook together, and hang out with friends,” she says. “Everything worked on a trust-based system, where if you took food or drink you would write it down and pay for it.”  

Dublin already has a co-operative and community-focused culture, she says. 

Consider the old Irish word meitheal, or “coming together,” says Johnston. There would have been days where the whole community would come together, around harvest time, to help each other with the work that needed to be done. 

The Phibsboro Corporation

While the Climate Co-op is entering a start-up phase this autumn, the team already have their sights set on sectors where they think community wealth building in Phibsboro could flourish. 

The Co-op have partnered with SSE Airtricity and Generation Green Community Fund to create a green trade pre-apprenticeship programme alongside the Bohs football academy. 

The idea is to teach their young footballers the skills they require to take up apprenticeships in fields like renewable energy and green construction – so that if a player decides football isn't right for them, the Bohs will then help to find suitable apprenticeships. 

Stephen Curran, a Phibsboro local and long-term Bohs FC member, was delighted to hear about the programme. 

“Unfortunately for the kids, statistics show that most of them won't make it to a level of football where they’ll earn a living,” says Curran. 

Curran believes that giving the Bohs young footballers an education would give them meaning, as well as opportunity, outside of football, he says. 

“If a footballer gets a career-ending injury, everything they valued about themselves could be gone. Give them an education in other areas, they don't see themselves as just footballers anymore. I think that's really important,” says Curran.

The Climate Co-op is also working with UEFA and Solar Power Europe on a grant proposal to the European Union to support the start-up of a retrofitting service to install solar power systems at people’s homes, says McCabe. 

They could, potentially, employ green apprenticeship graduates to do so, he says. 

If successful, a democratically owned solar-power installation business, with a locally educated workforce, would be a good example of how climate action and community wealth building could effectively work together, says McCabe. 

The Climate Co-op also sees a gap in the school meals scheme which, in the national Budget 2025 was expanded to all primary schools.

Under the scheme, each school chooses their own supplier. 

McCabe says that he thinks the school meals scheme generates an opportunity for a farm-to-fork initiative that could employ north county Dublin farmers to supply a co-operatively run industrial kitchen and distribution service.

That would achieve the economic aims of the co-op, while providing children with healthy school meals through a sustainable and climate friendly process, says McCabe. 

McCabe and the rest of the team encourage anyone interested in the Climate Co-op to join their mailing list or come along to their next community event.