Green rights for a sustainable future: Enhancing citizens’ involvement in EU’s climate ambitions

EU citizens' support for climate action is increasing, while the Union put forward the most ambitious plan to become a carbon-neutral continent by 2050. Citizens’ buy-in is crucial to implement the 2030 and 2050 targets but varies significantly across the MSs. Eastern countries are lagging, underrepresented groups remain disengaged from the public talks and civic actions, while the involvement of women, youths, minorities, and elderly people in the decision-making processes on environmental issues remains limited. We have selected three MSs (Romania, Hungary, and Italy) where the citizens’ awareness and participation on climate and environmental issues are below the EU average and environmental-related innovations are limited. These countries are widely affected by pollution and serious climate events. The project targets residents of the urban areas for a maximum impact as the cities are responsible for more than two-thirds of GHG emissions (upward trend) and must address similar challenges. Urban communities can act as a driving factor in shifting to a green and sustainable future if the citizens’ awareness and participation are high. Underrepresented groups are at the centre of this proposal. A gender-balanced approach is used within the consortium and shapes the design of the activities. Tailor-made engagement and awareness strategies are to be adopted for each target group. We aim to provide: (i) assessment on citizens’ awareness and involvement, including measuring personal impact on climate change and COVID-19 impact on daily habits, (ii) prioritization of climate challenges at the urban sub-national/national level from the perspective of citizens, CSOs, decision-makers (iii) scale-up good practices and foster civic engagement in advocating and promoting sustainable changes and (iv) provide innovative and tailor-made tools to raise citizens’ involvement in environmental issues. Gender equality and diversity are key components of our activities.