Pathways for co-creation between local authorities and collective actions for a sustainable transition

In Western democracies, traditional institutional participation is on the decline while non-institutional participation has been increasing. Non-institutional participation for the climate transition often relies on a prefigurative approach, thus creating spaces to incubate alternative ideas and novel forms of political participation (niches). Empowering these forms of political participation to encourage niche innovations will provoke the radical yet necessary changes in the socio-technical system for a climate transition. The CO-SUSTAIN project seeks to address this opportunity for a democratic climate transition, by defining and testing new democratic pathways enabling local policymakers to support various and novel forms of political participation and empowering citizens to act for a sustainable transition. To develop a better understanding of political participation linked to environmental, political and societal imperatives, CO-SUSTAIN will study 18 historic examples in 6 different European countries for each of the latent and manifest forms of political participation underlined by Ekman: involvement, civic engagement, formal political participation, and activism. It will use institutional ethnography and system mapping to understand the dynamics of the participation and its management, thus delivering best practices to stimulate and support political participation around these imperatives. These best practices will serve to define interventions for solution co-creation in 4 case studies, one for each form of political participation: involvement through Spanish energy communities, civic engagement through Food Solidarity in Turin, manifest political participation through participatory processes promoted by the government in Northern Europe and activism through the Lobau Bleibt social movement in Austria. The outputs and outcomes of the deliberations will be assessed to draw conclusions for more democratic climate policymaking across Europe.