Understanding how community groups take on the challenge of climate change is key to unders tanding the capacity of society as a whole to adapt in the face of climate change in wa ys that acknowledge a broader need for a sustainable societal transition. In order to show this it is important to identify what distinguishes self-organised responses to the cli mate change challenge from other responses. Through critically evaluating t he existing literature on self-organisation and on locally based responses to climate change, the paper clarifies what we mean by self-organised response and then demonstrates how the concept woul d enhance the scope of researc h about local-level responses to enhan ce societal sustainability. Furth ermore, the article presents an agenda for identif ying self-organised responses to climate change and distinguishing self-organised responses from other f orms of ‘community-led’ response.