Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SHARED GREEN DEAL (SHARED GREEN DEAL: Social sciences & Humanities for Achieving a Responsible, Equitable and Desirable GREEN DEAL)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-02-01 bis 2024-01-31
SHARED GREEN DEAL’s core goal is to stimulate shared actions on Green Deal initiatives across Europe, by providing Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) tools to support the implementation of 8 EU Green Deal policy areas, at the local and regional level. Through our broad membership-based network partners, social experiments in 24 European locations will be aligned with current strategic priorities of on-the-ground policy, NGO, business and citizen groups. The resulting SHARED GREEN DEAL Network will build capacity, maximise impacts, and enable longer term system change throughout the 2020s and beyond. Building on insights from 40+ relevant H2020 and EU projects, the significant SSH expertise of our consortium and wider research networks will bring overlooked behavioural, cultural, and social evidence to the fore, accelerating transitions which are Responsible, Desirable, and Equitable for all EU citizens.
The project has five objectives.
• Objective 1: Undertake transdisciplinary action research through ‘social experiments’ that target both individuals and collectives in complementary ways, expanding opportunities for behavioural change whilst accounting for social and cultural dimensions
• Objective 2: Facilitate two-way dialogue and participatory mechanisms to ensure the needs and desires of both citizen and professional stakeholders are taken into account and built into the design of Green Deal initiatives.
• Objective 3: Create cross-stakeholder network that acts as gateway (for EC and others) to SSH policy evidence for social change processes across all Green Deal priorities.
• Objective 4: Disseminate findings in accessible ways, to facilitate Green Deal delivery.
• Objective 5: Through embedding ambitious RRI principles and impact evaluations, create processes to ensure that benefits of the Green Deal are shared in a just and equitable way, including for vulnerable and disadvantaged communities and actors affected by economic changes.
The project has five objectives.
• Objective 1: Undertake transdisciplinary action research through ‘social experiments’ that target both individuals and collectives in complementary ways, expanding opportunities for behavioural change whilst accounting for social and cultural dimensions
• Objective 2: Facilitate two-way dialogue and participatory mechanisms to ensure the needs and desires of both citizen and professional stakeholders are taken into account and built into the design of Green Deal initiatives.
• Objective 3: Create cross-stakeholder network that acts as gateway (for EC and others) to SSH policy evidence for social change processes across all Green Deal priorities.
• Objective 4: Disseminate findings in accessible ways, to facilitate Green Deal delivery.
• Objective 5: Through embedding ambitious RRI principles and impact evaluations, create processes to ensure that benefits of the Green Deal are shared in a just and equitable way, including for vulnerable and disadvantaged communities and actors affected by economic changes.
The first year focused on the development and implementation of the whole of work package 1. This was centred around three sets of activities. First, we produced an online database of local and regional initiatives that were relevant to the EU Green Deal. These totalled 2,000 database entries and spanned all Green Deal policy areas and European geographies. Second, we established collaborative relationships with our sister Green Deal projects, as well as other relevant EU initiatives such as the Horizon Europe Missions. We developed these relationships through a series of informal interviews that focused on synergies and how we may best work together over the course of the five-year project. Third, in partnership with stakeholders, we ran a series of Transition Arena events that focused on the six Green Deal policy areas that experiments our looking into. The interest in these Arenas was on transformative pathways necessary for delivering the much-needed Green Deal policy objectives.
The second year focused on the co-creation and implementation of our six experiment streams. Our streams are: preserving biodiversity, energy-efficient renovations, clean energy, sustainable mobility, sustainable food, and circular economy. With input gained from the European Commission, the consortium produced Implementation Plans, which then fed into the successful recruitment of subcontractors (or what we call local partners), who would help us deliver on these implementation plans. We received a considerable amount of interest from NGOs and municipalities, with 950+ and 349 submitting Expressions of Interest and Final Applications respectively. Subsequently, 24 local partners were selected, trained and closely collaborated with.
Supporting cross-cutting work was also delivered. For instance, Work Package 6 on evaluation produced two Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) deliverables, which defined how our project considered responsibility and set out plans for how we will achieve this internally within the consortium and also externally with participants and our local partners. Work Package 8 on policy and governance additionally did a documentary analysis of all key EC policy documents connected to the EU Green Deal, which provides excellent foundations for us to ensure that our work remains policy-relevant moving forward. A range of communications (WP9), coordination (WP10), and ethics (WP11) deliverables were also successfully submitted.
The second year focused on the co-creation and implementation of our six experiment streams. Our streams are: preserving biodiversity, energy-efficient renovations, clean energy, sustainable mobility, sustainable food, and circular economy. With input gained from the European Commission, the consortium produced Implementation Plans, which then fed into the successful recruitment of subcontractors (or what we call local partners), who would help us deliver on these implementation plans. We received a considerable amount of interest from NGOs and municipalities, with 950+ and 349 submitting Expressions of Interest and Final Applications respectively. Subsequently, 24 local partners were selected, trained and closely collaborated with.
Supporting cross-cutting work was also delivered. For instance, Work Package 6 on evaluation produced two Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) deliverables, which defined how our project considered responsibility and set out plans for how we will achieve this internally within the consortium and also externally with participants and our local partners. Work Package 8 on policy and governance additionally did a documentary analysis of all key EC policy documents connected to the EU Green Deal, which provides excellent foundations for us to ensure that our work remains policy-relevant moving forward. A range of communications (WP9), coordination (WP10), and ethics (WP11) deliverables were also successfully submitted.
SHARED GREEN DEAL go beyond state-of-the-art by filling the following gaps in research and innovation. First, too little attention has been given to the ‘meso’ middle ground between individuals on the one hand (‘micro’), and bigger systems and infrastructures on the other hand (‘macro’). Second, there has been insufficient attention given to the critical social sciences and the role that they can play in developing robust, co-creative and participatory methods that engage a wide range of stakeholders. Third, there has been too few attempts to bring together truly transdisciplinary groups spanning all geographies, Green Deal policy areas and stakeholder types, as part of pursuing an evidence base and community of practice that can effectively support European Commission policy making on sustainability and the environment up until 2030. Fourth, in taking such approaches, we also highlight the usefulness of transition arenas in framing the starting points for these collaborations. Fifth, we note the importance of having a socio-technical understanding of experimentation, whereby we can learn through failure, learn through doing, and ultimately work with true frontrunners and pioneers that are at the cutting-edge of Green Deal governance initiatives.