Implement pilot actions – Ensure a Green Deal where no one is left behind!

The ACCTING project team has identified 10 ideas for pilot actions that have high potential to address vulnerabilities in the areas of the European Green Deal, and will be awarded, funded and tested through a call that will open on 7. July and close on 8. September 2023.

Up to €32,000 per pilot will be awarded – subject to costs motivation from applying parties – for projects which should last up to 12 months.

ACCTING is an EU-funded project aiming to understand the impact of Green Deal policies on vulnerable groups, prevent inequalities, and produce knowledge and innovations to advance behavioural change at individual and collective levels for an inclusive and equal European Green Deal.

Join our team as an IT intern specializing in WordPress and gain hands-on experience in website development, customization, and maintenance.

You’ll collaborate with the Communications team to enhance website functionality and user experience.

• Closing date for applications: Sunday 23rd July 23:00 (Brussels time)
• Applications will be processed as they are submitted and until the right candidate is recruited, we therefore recommend that you apply before the deadline

Are you a passionate storyteller, graphic designer, filmmaker, writer or artist of any kind?

We're working on the Advocacy campaign design & strategy that will be launched in November 2023 and we would like to invite our network members, partners and friends to participate in its execution!

If you have a creative talent or you are a professional creative, we'd love to hear from you.

The European Day of Sustainable Communities (EDSC), celebrated every September since 2017, showcases thousands of transformative initiatives across Europe.

This year’s campaign #JoinTheBigTable will bring the EDSC to the digital landscape for the first time, spreading the word to a wider audience. Citizens out there want to do something about the ecological emergency and this campaign will hopefully bring inspiration to learn more about our communities and the crucial role they play for a sustainable future for all.

We invite you to upload up to 10 pictures on our website when you gather around a table with your communities, before September 17th. With all the pictures that we receive, we will create a video-collage of a digital communal table that we will share on September 23rd as our collective celebration of the 7th edition of the EDSC.

Watch the campaign video, read the toolkit to learn step by step how to participate and share with likeminded people and communities. We can’t wait to see how big this table can become (and link the result with our upcoming Advocacy campaign, stay tuned).

Read the harvesting report of ECOLISE’s Advocacy training which took place on the 13th to the 16th of March at Koningsteen, Kapelle-op-den-Bos, Belgium, explore the tools shared to drive change and amplify CLIs voices to create sustainable futures.The comprehensive document captures key workshops, discussions, and outcomes. You can also watch the video of the event, read testimonials from participants and gain valuable insights from the training.

We are happy to let you know that the Alt Shift Festival is back for round 2! From the 12-19 August 2023, a degrowth immersion week awaits you. This year’s central topic is transformative degrowth education: How to inspire, create space for, resist for, and educate degrowth? Expect convivial spaces, jam sessions, cooking and camping together, workshops, art performances, concerts, moving exhibitions, and more.

The location of the festival is the magical "Art in Nature" (Kunst in der Natur), a place on the Wachtberg in the forest district of Lower Austria. Get your tickets before July 15th!

ECOLISE participated in The Civil Society Forum for Sustainability, held on June 26th and 27th, 2023, which brought together civil society organizations, citizens, experts, and policymakers to discuss the future of the European Green Deal (EGD) and its potential for socio-economic transformations led by the implementation of participatory processes and deliberative democracy. For the main key takeaways and debates in the forum:

A toolkit designed for community climate groups

Communities like yours across the world are increasingly aware of the need to take action on climate change but often feel overwhelmed by the scale and complexity of the issues raised, and don’t feel empowered to take action.

The Schumacher Institute, ECOLISE member, has created a Community Climate Action Toolkit to help you. A richly illustrated, easy to navigate PDF document, viewable on a computer or portable device.

• EU citizens want MEPs to vote to #RestoreNature. 71% in Ireland, 75% in Netherlands & 80% in Germany (tweet)
• ECOLISE have engaged in ongoing action to support the call for a YES vote (tweet)

On Wednesday (July 12th), there will be an extraordinarily decisive vote in the European Parliament which will decide whether we have a chance of overcoming the biodiversity crisis in Europe.

The Nature Restoration Law proposal is the first comprehensive nature legislation in the EU in 30 years. If adopted, it would set into action a process by which all 27 countries of the EU would create national nature restoration plans, in which they set out how they will contribute to overarching EU goals to restore the state of nature in Europe to a good condition.

..The Nature Restoration Law is the political response to the biodiversity crisis, to address the dramatic loss of species and all the loss of benefits we would normally get from healthy ecosystems.

..Throughout the past months, the EPP has deeply entrenched itself into an anti-nature position ahead of next year’s European elections in a bid to consolidate right-wing votes…

Visit the new website for the FLIARA - Female-Led Innovation in Agriculture and Rural Areas project now!

Sign up today at for the newsletter. You'll receive regular updates on our project's progress, as well as information on upcoming events and initiatives.

The core objective of FLIARA is to ensure that women in rural areas are embedded in, and supported by, a more effective innovation ecosystem. We envision this to be an ecosystem which spotlights their achievements, provides them with sources of inspiration and knowledge, allows them to network with key actors, heightens their visibility and inclusion within local, national and supranational decision-making, as well as increases their capacity to empower themselves and continue leading or developing innovative practices in farming and rural areas.

The project will unveil the needs and challenges faced by women leading innovative environmental and rural development practices in farming and rural communities. In doing this, FLIARA will increase the visibility and awareness of current female-led innovations, and their centrality and importance in achieving the EU sustainability and inclusion goals. Through FLIARA we will develop a Community of Practice supporting innovative ecosystems and smart solutions, endorsing and encouraging current and future female innovations and entrepreneurship.

Visit the newly launched project website fliara.eu, developed by the consortium partner Consulta Europa, to find out more about the project, read news about women in agriculture and subscribe to the newsletter!

Connect with the FLIARA project on social media

I met legendary Chacho Puebla back in 2011 while working in the advertising industry. Our agency’s mission consisted of bringing ideas and sharing them globally. In fact, we used to sell fast food to the whole world.

The 15-M anti-austerity movement in Spain was blooming by then, touching the hearts of many Spaniards, including mine.

I quit advertising and moved to Canada for a few years. Over a decade, I learned about Chacho’s life from our occasional social media interaction. I discovered that he left the agency where we met, that he became a parent of twins and that he created a new project called Felicidad Collective, with a focus on social and ecological values.

When I recently joined ECOLISE in December 2022, I found the organization’s goals were very ambitious, yet the resources seemed limited. However, I was empowered to work autonomously and given a lot of space for experimentation, so there was potential for meaningful change.

ECOLISE is forming a strong alliance of  partners in its policy positioning process 2023 on community-led initiatives and the European Green Deal. We are doing this in two phases: 

Until mid September, we are looking for process partners ready to engage in deep conversations on "10 theses towards transformative community-led local development policies"

Starting with our main policy event (November 2023, date tbc), we are looking for content partners with a shared vision and willing to engage in a joint advocacy campaign 2023 - 2024

So far, we have built alliances with around 30 process partners, and we hope to strengthen and grow our network! Read more about these two levels of engagement in the process  and get in touch with ECOLISE’s advocate team if you are interested to join us!

Ever since September 2022, ECOLISE has embarked on an extensive consultation phase of the 10 theses towards transformative community-led local development policies. So far, over 350 persons from >130 organisations have taken part. 

This May marked the inauguration of the Deepening Phase, a series of dedicated conversations and consultation that focus on delving into a few of the 10 theses, exploring key political demands and arguments with a focus on the European Green Deal. The outcome of the Deepening Phase will be the #10theses manifesto = a 2-4 page long document integrating key messages and narratives, which will be published at ECOLISE’s main policy event (November 2023).

To organize the Degrowth movement, JP Arellano put together an overarching database collecting degrowth groups, conferences, educational programmes, publications and media.

They published it on their blog, check it out and feel free to contribute.. (tweet here)

The database consists of:

• Groups (A staggering 240+ Degrowth-related groups around the world!)
• People (A community directory where 86 people have so far filled out a survey with their details)
• Policies (400+ degrowth policies, as seen in Fitzpatrick et al.)
• Papers (Over 600 academic papers on degrowth – more coming soon)
• Media (40+ documentaries, playlists of podcasts, lectures and panels in 7+ languages)
• Books (Almost 500 books related to degrowth ideas in ~28 languages)
• News (50+ News articles on degrowth in 4 languages)
• Education (~40 Degrowth Masters, Fellowships, Bachelors, Courses, Summers Schools, Certificates, Workshops, etc.)
• Conferences (Details on 20+ Conferences about degrowth/post-growth)
• Assemblies (Details on the 4 International Degrowth Assemblies)

On the 6th of July representatives from more than 150 from groups and localities gathered at Nau Bostik in Barcelona (https://naubostik.com/) to validate and celebrate the birth of the Catalan Assembly for Ecosocial Transition. A new experiment that arises from a process of reflection by the groups and entities that promoted the Ecosocial Transition Forum held in February 2023. With 5 major objectives, it will seek to become a tool for articulation and public advocacy for the impulse of a just, democratic and eco-feminist ecological transition.

• Be a voice in the public debate on the ecosocial transition, make a political impact and generate an attractive story about the transition.
• Develop a shared political program and bring social movements together around a common vision of ecosocial transition.
• Favour ecosocial transition processes from the local level, through the creation of Local Assemblies for the Ecosocial Transition.
• Promote strategic coordination between all resistance struggles
• Follow up and support the deployment of actions

We will be closely following this innovative process that is just starting!

This MOOC is the first part of an interconnected series of four MOOCs on Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems (DRRS) which bring together science, design and transformative praxis as a fluid, intervention-based and synergistic process for addressing complex challenges. This is explored through extending our worldviews, reframing complexity, designing as nature, activating our minds through physical movement, and connecting with new communities of practice. Successful completion of MOOC#1 is your gateway to enter the ETH Zurich DRRS executive degree program, with the first Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS).

Youth and Environment Europe (YEE) is the largest independent European network of environmental youth organisations.

YEE have just published their Intersectionality Toolkit, a powerful resource for incorporating intersectionality into climate action. Explore the framework that connects social identities, power dynamics, and environmental impacts. Let's build a just and inclusive climate movement together!

In June ECOLISE’s community engagment officer, Duncan Crowley, presented 2 works at the Ecocity World Summit 2023 in the Barbican Centre in London. Crowley is doing a PhD in “Community-Led Ecocities” in ISCTE’s School of Architecture in Lisbon, and working with ECOLISE member FCUL, in the ecology research lab CE3C and also Dinamia’CET in ISCTE.

Speaking in the Panel “A global catalogue of community action”, Crowley shared work from the ECOLISE led project UrbanA (stage 1, stage 2) and the ongoing experiments in developing a Community of Practice.

He also shared an E-Poster about using walking tours in the greater Lisbon area, to connect a series of groups including ECOLISE’s “European Day for Sustainable Communities”, UrbanA, Degrowth and more local groups.

We invite you to visit the resources section of our website, where you will find very valuable information and learning materials. From publications and webinars to podcasts and courses, these resources will keep you up-to-date and will be useful for your ongoing development.