AdvanCing behavioural Change Through an INclusive Green deal

Project Information

ACCTING

Grant agreement ID: 101036504

DOI

10.3030/101036504

Project closed

EC signature date 28 September 2021

Start date 1 February 2022

End date 31 May 2025

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 4 996 441,26

EU contribution

€ 4 996 441,26

Coordinated by

FONDATION EUROPEENNE DE LA SCIENCE
France

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ACCTING (AdvanCing behavioural Change Through an INclusive Green deal)

Reporting period: 2024-02-01 to 2025-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The global climate crisis has devastating impacts on individuals, families, collectives of people, economies, and societies. The impacts are not only ecological; they are also economic, social, and political, and unfortunately, often overlooked. Just as climate change doesn’t affect everyone in the same way, the impacts of policies responding to the climate crisis are uneven. People are disproportionately affected, with poorer, marginalised, and vulnerable groups generally most acutely, which in turn exacerbates existing socio-economic inequalities. Yet, Green Deal policies not only often fail to respond to these inequalities; they can even increase them. Averting, or even mitigating this crisis requires transformative change; changes in the behaviour of individuals, communities, and organisations. If the Green Deal is to “leave no-one behind”, the necessary behavioural change must be accessible to all. The ACCTING project analysed the impact of Green Deal policies on vulnerable groups and produced knowledge and innovations to advance behavioural change at individual and collective levels for an inclusive and equal European Green Deal.

The overall objectives of ACCTING were thus to:
- Understand the impact of Green Deal policy initiatives on individual and collective behaviours with specific attention to vulnerable groups.
- Provide evidence and empower policymakers and other stakeholders to anticipate policy responses, the potential negative impacts on inequalities, and to mitigate such impacts in Green Deal decision-making;
- Co-creatively design and implement pilot actions to be deployed by policymakers and stakeholders in the policy domains of the Green Deal with the ambition to reduce or prevent inequalities and promote participation and social justice.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

ACCTING mobilised research experimentation and innovation based on an interdisciplinary methodological framework to advance a gender-equal, inclusive and socially just European Green Deal. Specifically focusing on inequalities produced and reproduced in the context of Green Deal policies, ACCTING collected new data on Green Deal policy interventions at individual, organisational, community, and societal levels. Research activities were defined along eight thematic and interdisciplinary research lines:

Climate Action:
1.Valorising local knowledge on natural hazards Biodiversity:
2.Land use restrictions
Clean energy:
3.Energy poverty
4.EEMs/SMEs
Farm to fork:
5. Food security
6. Food values
Sustainable mobility:
7.Transport poverty
8.Post-lockdown transport choices

On this basis, research activities ACCTING developed the theoretical and methodological framework to ensure the integration of the perspectives of complexity and intersectionality. It involved an extensive mapping and comparative analysis of almost 700 bottom-up environmental initiatives, identifying local authorities, NGOs, CSOs and other actors in 34 countries. In parallel, the eight thematic and interdisciplinary research lines were developed. The successful implementation of the first of the two research cycles of qualitative data collection resulted in 400 narrative interviews gathered through fieldwork in 14 countries along the eight research lines, published in Open Access. The final stage involved the second research cycle of case studies, which saw 435 interviews, leading into synthesised and comparative analyses of the two research cycles. At the same time, the multi-sectoral workshops - Open Studios - were developed and conducted, leveraging the research results and co-creating ideas and concepts for innovative solutions, similarly in two cycles. The knowledge and insights produced have been used to produce two rounds of operational recommendations, published as Factsheets, and research agendas, and to launch, implement, monitor and evaluate ten pilot actions, making the project results even more visible and concrete, and to test innovative solutions to advance behavioural change for an inclusive and equal European Green Deal.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

ACCTING stands out by delivering an interdisciplinary combination of different issues across multiple areas of Green Deal interventions and with its strong focus on reducing gendered and intersectional inequalities produced and reproduced by Green Deal interventions. The project researchers conducted exploratory and explanatory research, co-created solutions, pilot actions and produced operational recommendations across biodiversity, clean energy, climate action, farm to fork, and sustainable mobility. Many previous projects have studied drivers, social practices and factors that stabilise them, enabling and inhibiting factors, or provided collective learning tools, and many of them included the ACCTING consortia partners. The great innovative strength of ACCTING is that it looked at the greater picture where people make trade-offs between the different issues and across areas of intervention, and it underlines the pivotal role of community-led initiatives - and particularly from marginalised groups - in providing accessible and supportive spaces that nurture both individual and collective change in behaviour.

By providing in-depth knowledge of inequalities caused or worsened by Green Deal policies and involving stakeholders in the co-creation of solutions, ACCTING has delivered on four main impact goals:
- Make visible the effects of the Green Deal on vulnerable people and the emergence of new forms of discrimination and inequality
- Empower policymakers to take measures that alleviate or mitigate the adverse effects of decisions associated with the Green Deal on inequalities and vulnerable groups
- Stimulate initiatives taken by citizens and NGOs to involve society and more specifically vulnerable groups to adapt their behaviour to climate change and use these to inspire and facilitate their uptake
- Develop new concepts of bottom-up initiatives that have positive impacts on inequalities and discrimination to inspire policymakers and other stakeholders to roll these out and develop them further.

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