Together with the need of a higher ambition, governments at all level are becoming more and more aware also of the importance to have the community on board to make it possible. For local governments, this needs to translate in the attention to build a more direct dialogue with their citizens as both individuals and organization.

The buy-in of the local community is key to ensure the successful implementation of measure and, sometimes, even the possibility to realize some of them at all with the additional resources that those can bring.

Participation is one of the main focus of DECIDE, investigated by the research team from the University of Mannheim (Germany) and Seeburg (Austria) partner in the project. Trough in depth desk research and social experiment carried out in collaboration with the DECIDE pilots, the colleagues deepened the different degrees of participation, what push or refrain individuals to engage and the importance of social norms in favouring a behavioural change.

These were some of the findings that the researchers Sonja Klingert and Mona Bielig shared to kick off the webinar Community Ownership and Participation for Effective Mitigation and Adaptation Planning, jointly organized with the Covenant of Mayors Europe on Thursday 24 November.

Participants had the possibility to learn more from the concrete examples of Klimaan and the city of Mechelen (Belgium) on renewable energy and mobility, the city of Genk (Belgium) on the preservation and restoration of a natural reserve and the city of Valencia (Spain) on the recent launch of a socialised powerplant in the neighbourhood of Las Naves.

Have a look at the presentations from:
Community Energy in Mechelen
Stiemervalley
Las Naves Brillen
Mona Bielig (University of Seeburg) and Sonja Klingert (University of Mannheim)