From Impact Accounting to Accounting for the Loops: Activating Sustainable Communities for Climate Action

The growing urgency of climate change demands educational programs capable of triggering rapid and stable transformative actions, as well as impact accounting protocols capable of assessing their long-term effects. This study, thus, introduces a novel social impact accounting methodological framework for sustainability education for climate action (SECA)—accounting for the loops—based on system dynamics. This research applies the novel framework to a participatory case study of a university-led community garden to identify leverage points that may affect a SECA educational activity. It integrates semi-structured interviews with participants and stakeholders, qualitative inductive coding to identify relevant variables, and a causal loop diagram based on the identified variables to point out main leverage points that can amplify the positive impacts. Findings from the case study reveal that a sense of belonging and personal recognition activate reinforcing loops, while, counterintuitively, project size and community autonomy trigger balancing loops, increasing bureaucratic obstacles and required institutional support, which negatively affect participant motivation. The proposed approach offers both conceptual and methodological advancements for evaluating and designing sustainable community programs.