Abstract
This paper explores the role public policies have or may have in favoring or disfavoring the emergence, development, and diffusion of community-based sustainability initiatives. To this end, it presents evidence collected through a survey of 63 initiatives operating in six city-regions in Europe and across various domains of active citizenship: alternative food networks, community energy, sustainable mobility, and recycling. Results show that although they are mostly driven by pragmatic goals, the case of apolitical grassroots initiatives is quite rare. Most initiatives aspire both to challenge the political regime and strengthen their relationships with policy-makers. These two dimensions are correlated, showing that an “antagonist” attitude is as well infrequent. When it comes to the content of these relationships, the picture becomes more problematic: while one-half of the initiatives have been supported by public policies, almost two-thirds of them encountered some policy obstacle. The issue is very much context-specific. We show that in those countries or domains where the policy environment is more supportive—in the UK, Finland, waste and energy—the political activities of initiatives are also more dialogical. However, in unsupportive contexts—Central and Southern Europe, and food domain—they tend to be oppositional. Based on an analysis of the most recurrent policy barriers, the paper identifies some crucial areas where public policies can make a difference in facilitating or hindering a community-led sustainability transition.
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Acknowledgements
The authors owe a very special thanks to all the participants to the project TESS: Towards European Societal Sustainability (www.tess-transition.eu), who gave a crucial contribution to the ideas developed in the article. The content of the article is solely the responsibility of the authors.
Funding
The research received the financial support of the European Union Seventh Framework Program FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement no. 603705. The European Commission is not liable for any use that can be made of the information contained herein.
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Special issue: Sustainability transitions to low carbon societies: insights from European community-based initiatives
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Celata, F., Coletti, R. Enabling and disabling policy environments for community-led sustainability transitions. Reg Environ Change 19, 983–993 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01471-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01471-1