2022 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"
16th Edition
The City of Amsterdam are committed to decarbonisation and sustainable energy generation, with a goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 55% in 2030 and 95% in 2050. Communities are leading the City’s transition to decarbonisation and climate resilience, requiring the City to develop a more integrated engagement approach to work alongside communities, and adopt a more experimental mindset to build capabilities for innovation. One of these approaches trialled successful in 2021 as part of the City’s involvement in the EIT Climate-KIC Healthy, Clean Cities Deep Demonstration and with support of design partner Democratic Society has been a ‘Toolbox for Change’ workshop to explore conditions for ‘Government as an Enabler’ of change for energy communities to engage in actions that support decarbonisation and a democratic energy transition.
This workshop was the penultimate event of a series of community engagements conducted throughout the year to determine community needs for energy transition, including expert interviews with energy system actors working with marginalised communities.
The experience has demonstrated innovative, participatory methods for community empowerment and the change possible when citizens and grassroots groups progress change from the ground-up. It has also shown how active participation of the public can improve public policy with collective action and visioning between diverse actors being translated into tangible outputs for policymakers and party consideration.
A four-hour workshop was held with 14 participants (energy communities, member networks, civil society and civil servants) in October 2021, involving discussion of the meaning of ‘Government as enabler of communities development’, and group work to build a ‘Toolbox for Change’. The Toolbox for Change sets out community-specified goals, tools, actors and actions, progress markers (indicators of change), and the Government’s enabling role towards just energy transition, and specific targets of local ownership and decarbonisation by 2030-2050.
The Toolbox for Change has:
- Helped spread and iterate ideas for energy transition within broader city networks and bilateral initiatives, including a ‘School of the Commons’ involving other City stakeholders and changemaker networks.
- Been presented to City Aldermen at the January 2022 Day of the Cooperatives, to influence budget, resourcing, policy, and new forms of governance for the City in 2022 and beyond to achieve a just energy transition;
- Influenced thinking on sustainable futures and local ownership of the commons at the council level, forming part of the agreements of a new coalition unveiled in May 2022.
Evaluation of practice and method efficacy has come in the form of Toolbox for Change ‘cut-through’ with policy makers in 2022, contributing to new coalition agreements. A set of progress markers towards just energy transition are specified in the Toolbox for Change, and are yet to be formalised into operation.
We hope this story of community empowerment and use of participatory, innovative methods to connect people with power to improve public policy will inspire others navigating local community development and ground-up approaches to climate transition.
More information:
Report resulting from the finalisation of a project task
Amsterdam Energy Transition: Toolbox for Change reference
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