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City and countryside: so close, so far

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Context

In an increasingly urban world, building resilient cities has become a challenge. But for this challenge to be successfully addressed, we cannot focus solely on urban areas. We need to develop strategies that consider the territory surrounding cities, as well as their dependence on the resources from rural areas. Establishing a balanced relationship between cities and their rural environment will bring mutual benefits while giving greater autonomy and independence to the city itself in obtaining the basic resources it needs. Based on this premise, this publication explores best practices in managing food, water or energy to make our cities and territories more resilient.

This report is partially based on the outputs of the conference “City and Countryside: So Close, So Far Away” (May 26th 2022), as part of the “Cities as places of hope” project.

 

Resilience is the capacity of a living being to adapt to a disturbing agent or an adverse situation. This term also applies to cities, for which this capacity to adapt is essential to respond to the major crises of our time.

 

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Available in Spanish

Available in Polish

 


This publication has been realized by the Green European Foundation and Transición Verde with the financial support of the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not responsible for the content of this publication.

Food Sovereignty, Climate action and Local Resilience

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Context

This pamphlet on Food Sovereignty, Climate Action and Local Resilience follows on from A Question of Scale: “Imagining a cooperative, community-led approach to regional resilience”. A framing paper in which we explored the potential of the Social and Solidarity Economy, Doughnut Economics, Just Transition, The Commons, Community Wealth Building, Federated co-ops as approaches to help us address the climate and ecological emergency.

The co-creation of this pamphlet began with a first draft distributed to local food, community and cooperative advocates. Then, they attended a webinar to discuss identify the blockers and enablers of this regenerative and community-led approach. Finally, we added the harvest of the session, along with links to initiatives in the field, and an infographic.

Challenging the global trade regime and the bilateral trade agreements which en-trench trade relations and which negatively affect peasant farmers on both sides is a vital part of the picture of Food Sovereignty and the global conversation that needs to be had about how to protect, encourage and support biodiverse, agroecological and small scale production not just in our backyard, but across the world.

 

This publication was produced as part of GEF’s Climate Emergency Economy project, exploring the challenge of such a climate emergency economy by focusing on “hard-to-decarbonise” sectors like transport, trade, industry, or agriculture.

 

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Also available in Polish.


This publication has been realised with the support of the Green Foundation Ireland, Cultivate and the financial support of the European Parliament to the Green European Foundation. The European Parliament is not responsible for the content of this publication.

Metals for a Green and Digital Europe- An Agenda for Action

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Context

The climate crisis leaves us no choice but to make a swift transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. However, while energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind is nearly infinite, the resources we need to capture it are not. Solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and power cables all contain metals. Their various properties, including toughness and conductivity, make metals uniquely suitable for renewable energy technologies. But first they must be extracted from ores that are dug up from the ground. Because of its decentralised nature, a renewable energy system requires far larger quantities of metals than a fossil energy system.

 

The more energy we harvest from the skies above our heads, the deeper we will have to dig for the metals beneath our feet.

 

Objectives

Both the energy transition and the digital transition require large quantities of metals, such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth. As a result, Europe must face up to various types of scarcity. This Agenda for Action sets out how we can achieve the sparing, circular use of metals and the responsible sourcing of the virgin metals that we really need.

 

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Available in Czech 

Available in French

Available in Polish

Available in Swedish

Available in Serbian

Available in Portuguese

 


This publication is part of the Metals for a Green and Digital Europe project. The project is led by Wetenschappelijk Bureau GroenLinks and supported by Fundacja Strefa Zieleni, Institut Aktivního Občanství, the Green Economics Institute, Etopia, Visio, and Transición Verde, with Cogito from Sweden providing additional expertise.

Ten Thoughts on Growth

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With the ongoing Covid-crisis, it has become clear that “business as usual” is no longer an option, as the effects will be felt for years to come. Yet still, governments remain obsessed with growth based on GDP.

In this report, Mikael Malmaeus (board member in Cogito and researcher at The Swedish Environmental Research Institute) uncovers and clarifies the concepts of growth, their meaning and impact with the purpose to enable a meaningful, forward looking and insightful discussion on preferred futures and where to start to get there. With this collaboration, GEF and Cogito hope to contribute to a clear and comprehensive discussion on growth today and tomorrow, and to inspire actionable insight.

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Available in Polish

Available in Czech

Available in Albanian

Available in Turkish

Creating a Peoples’ Europe [VIDEO]

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“Creating a People’s Europe” was produced and scripted by John Gormley, Irish Minister for the Environment (2007 – 2011).

The film is a project of the Green European Foundation for the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament. It was realised in cooperation with the Heinrich Boell Foundation and with the financial support of the European Parliament.

Subtitles available in Catalan, Czech, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, and Spanish.

Green New Deal in Poland: The Social Dimension

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The crisis, as well as the proposed mainstream solutions which focus on fiscal austerity exclusively, don’t come without a social cost. This is illustrated by numbers, such as 50% youth unemployment in Spain; the cost of third level education, rising by 127% in Ireland; or a horizontal 15% pensions’ cut in Romania. Notwithstanding Greece, where consecutive adjustment packages to tackle the budgetary imbalances resulted in an increase in the already high numbers of people living below the poverty line and brought about a situation of imminent collapse of basic social infrastructure, such as health care. Over the last years, we have seen unemployment and social inequality on the rise in Europe, while the standards of the European model of social protection, labour law, collective bargaining rights or working conditions have seen frequent set-backs.

In the common market  of the EU, social policy has largely remained a competence of individual Member States, despite the Treaty of Lisbon and the Europe 2020 strategy detailing social policy objectives and concrete goals related to employment and poverty eradication. It is Member States who make the major policy decisions influencing the achievement of these goals. Embedded in this context, Zielony Instytut and the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Warsaw office initiated this Green European Foundation publication, attempting to link the European level trends, discussions and social policy goals to a concrete national example: Poland.

 

Social policy trends in Poland

In Poland, the developments in social policy seem largely unaffected by the crisis. As the European Trade Union Institute in its Policy Brief 2/2012 points out, “The crisis is essentially perceived and described as resulting from external factors, and in itself there exists no reason, therefore, to call into question existing national social arrangements.” Nevertheless, Poland has also seen a significant rise in economic inequalities in the last years, with a widening gap between those being able to harvest the benefits of Poland’s steady economic growth and the growing numbers of people who are left behind and feel the fruits of transformation are not available to them. This stratification of Polish society has effects in the radicalisation of the political scene, as we witnessed during the “Independence March” on November 11, 2012. The fierce political debate over the Polish pension reform (raising retirement age to 67 years) is another example of tensions in society. The hundreds of thousands of young people who already live abroad or are considering leaving the country cannot be seen as a sustainable solution for unemployment among the young generation in Poland.  The growing number of immigrants in Poland requires better access to the social system and integration programs, in order to create an open society of equal chances.

These are among the key topics this publication tackles in an attempt to give answers to what a Green social model for Europe could be: a model that preserves 20th century achievements, but sets out to innovate for the 21st century.

We have translated two of the contributions to this publication (“Social Policy – An Introduction” by Ryszard Szarfenberg and “Social Policy – Green debates” by Bartłomiej Kozek) in English, as well. You can download these below, alongside the publication in Polish.

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Social policy - an introduction 0.00 KB 37 downloads

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Social policy - Green debates 172.64 KB 47 downloads

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The Guide to EU Funding on Migration and Asylum

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In the absence of a common European response that treats migration as a human phenomenon and manages it as such, the task of welcoming and accommodating migrants and acting as their first personal contacts has mainly been taken on by local and regional authorities, non-governmental organisations and activists, who continue to play a key role in providing initial reception and access to services and fundamental rights for migrants and refugees. In this context, this guide builds on the idea that the best practices of how to welcome refugees and asylum seekers and work towards successful integration can be found in local communities and initiatives throughout Europe.

Therefore, the objective of this guide is to actively support the work of these local actors, organisations and institutions with a one-stop source of information on additional financial assistance offered by the EU. This guide provides a quick and easy overview of the relevant EU funding opportunities, with key information and practical inputs in regards to accessing them. Special attention is given to projects that foster integration, social inclusion and a better quality of life for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

A hard copy of this guide can be ordered by sending an email to: info@gef.eu

This publication as a PDF file is available for download in following versions:

Green New Deal in Poland

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The publication starts from the premise that although many European governments have taken over a discourse in line with the Green New Deal, there is long way to go to turn commendable political discourse into concrete political action. In this sense, the publication looks at key questions that need to be tackled in order to allow for a sustainable transformation of Europe’s economies.

Which sectors would drive the transformation and which sectors would be in most need of reform? Which transversal issues, such as gender relations or education, would have to be addressed as part of this transformation? These are questions that this publication deals with in detail. The aim is to highlight that there is an enormous latent potential to build a better future, which is not achieved due to unambitious policies within the European Union – at the national as well as the European level.

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Green New Deal in Poland EN 6.93 MB 158 downloads

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Green New Deal in Poland PL 7.02 MB 62 downloads

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European Citizens’ Initiative – updated edition

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The European Citizens’ Initiative gives citizens the right to set the agenda of the European Union and establishes a truly multifunctional means of providing checks and balances for what happens in the EU. This Pocket Guide offers readers the knowledge and insights necessary to make effective use of this new instrument.

In the six months that passed from the launch of the ECI instrument, 25 European Citizens’ Initiatives have been filed. Of these, 14 were registered by the European Commission, while others were rejected or withdrawn. The main challenge these first initiatives faced was related to the establishing a functional Online Collection System of signatures. In order to support the first initiatives, the European Commission offered organisers free servers in Luxembourg and decided to postpone the official start for the collection of signatures to August 2012, to make up for these initial set-backs. Even so, to date, only one of fourteen registered ECI’s is able to collect signatures online.

With this new edition of the ECI Pocket Guide, updated with the latest news and links to further sources of information and support, GEF aims to assist ECI organisers in their difficult challenge of pioneering European participatory democracy.

This updated edition has been produced by GEF for the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament.

How to use this Pocket Guide?

The Pocket Guide is divided in 3 sections which address the following questions, respectively: how can you use the ECI? What are the requirements you have to fulfil to successfully complete an ECI? Where can you find assistance for your ECI?

The ECI KEYCHAIN helps organiser identify the most suitable approach to an ECI. It details the various goals that an ECI can serve, such as introducing new ideas on the European legislative agenda, stopping existing legislation or acting as a platform that mediates between different legislative approaches.

The ECI PATHFINDER is a manual to assist ECI organisers or potential signatories to find their way through the often lengthy and sometimes cumbersome procedure of an initiative. The manual develops the 10 step approach to a European Citizens’ Initiative, already detailed in GEF’s earlier publications: The European Citizens’ Initiative Handbook and the flyer 10 Steps to the European Citizens’ Initiative.

The ECI RESOURCE CENTRE provides a wealth of details on the constitutional foundations, legal statutes and procedural regulations of the ECI. This chapter has been completely updated.

Order your copy now!

Would you like an own copy of the Pocket Guide? Then send us e-mail at info@gef.eu and we’ll send you one.

Successful pilot ECIs

GEF’s Campaign Handbook covered a number of successful ‘pilot ECIs’. These were efforts by NGOs and civil society groups to gather 1 million signatures in order to influence the EU’s agenda. They were inspired by the ECI, but took place before the ECI comes into effect on April 1st 2012.

1 million European Citizens for better animal welfare
Europeans unite for fair roaming
European Disability Forum and their ground-breaking ECI

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Green News – Climate Edition

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With articles in English, French and Polish, this e-book includes, among others, an examination of climate change as a moral challenge, an economic deconstruction of climate change as a ‘neoliberal illusion’, and a social perspective on climate change as a threat to the public goods that belong to all citizens.

A wide array of authors have contributed to the publication, including NGO representatives, political figures, scientists, and even an award-winning documentary-maker from several European countries. The e-book also contains case studies on how climate change is impacting specific areas such as the Arctic, the Amazon and Indonesia, as well as how the fight against climate change is manifested in areas such as resistance to TTIP, and how to spur further action and maintain the momentum of the campaign, now that COP21 is behind us.