‘What could Hubs — as Thriving Communities — do locally to trigger systemic change towards climate neutrality in their country and also for Europe?”

This is the question that triggered us to make sense of what we have been learning through the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) programme in Climate-KIC, after 6 years of development in 14 countries in Southern, South East and Central Eastern Europe.

Introduction

The aim of the [1] “Hubs” is to foster innovation for climate action in the most polluting and vulnerable regions of Europe. A challenge that the RIS programme supports by designing, experimenting and learning together with local actors. Hence - involving the Hubs from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Slovenia — we stopped and took 3 days of online meeting in which — using a sensemaking approach — we exercised deep listening and answered to the question What could the Hubs do locally to trigger systemic change towards climate neutrality in their country and also for Europe?” through the Enablers of Change: Collaborative Communities, Governmental Momentum, Enabling Economies and Smarter Systems.

To know more on that, you can read my colleague Tim Taylor’ article on the Enablers of Change.

Below, it is highlighted what- through the sensemaking interpretation — can make a “Hub” a Thriving Community, able to catalyse transformative change.

Collaborative Communities

Much of our current social systems, organising models and ways of working together will need improvement. Collaboration across our entire communities must be the foundation for agreeing on our goals and implementing the most effective strategies to achieve them. What is having most of the impact is to have dedicated people to make this vision happen and navigate complexity. In other words, a thriving community should be more than the sum of its partners. Does not count the quantity, but the ability to talk to different stakeholders their language.

Collaborative communities are those that are leaving no one behind in the process of transforming our systems and our regions. Still, we need to overcome the fact that usually, working in the environment and sustainability field, the same people attend the same events, making it challenging to engage with new actors from unexpected backgrounds and fields that might bring different perspectives. Engaging “unusual’ stakeholders, could support stronger community collaborations. Culture eats strategy at breakfast cit.[1] (and the transition, too) and could be the crucial ‘medium’ where change should be promoted. Cultural resistance can dampen any effort from our side. Innovative media are there to support us. All in all, we are on this together in Southern and Central Eastern Europe, as all countries are facing similar challenges in implementing green policies.

Enabling Economy

The economy is often not seen as a means to help us collaborate, prosper, and live well, but as an obstacle to progress rather than an enabler. What a Thriving Community should consider is: (i) focus on how to get access to financing mechanisms; (ii) start new economic models looking beyond the usual stakeholder relationships and financing mechanisms, ensuring that climate change is part of the conversation; (iii) ‘It is not about money but numbers’ — when one is successful in showing that change can be achieved, there is no chance that access to finance will be banned.

In this context, sustainable models by design, could drive enabling economies. This approach could leverage the EU Green Deal and recovery plans, making the COVID-19 crisis help in this direction. An integrated strategic and long-term plan of the Thriving Community is needed, including consistent dialogue with different actors and ambitious co-design processes at each country level. Not leaving unveiled the elephant in the room: the corruption level in the geographic area we work in. Even more important is trust into others, as trust levels vary across countries and usually those with low trust are also those with higher corruption. To overcome this, truly co-created solutions have to be designed, and the benefits have to be clearly shared and voiced to influential stakeholders. It is of fundamental importance that organizations driving innovation such as Climate-KIC continue to offer the safe-to-fail bottom-up business experimentation and innovation support, favouring the development of a green entrepreneurship mindset. We need to change our mental models of success, progress and enact new value systems that will drive society but maybe more importantly - individuals.

Governmental Momentum

Local governments can play a critical role in enabling change. Establishing relationships with Governments is a long-term process that builds trust and involves work on the field with ministries, industries, consumers, etc. The funding will flow once initiatives will show results, make a difference, and are bottom-up tailored to each countries profile, culture, and mentality.

Governmental momentum is also about governance. On the one hand, political parties can bring up or downs to our work, and the election calendar influences a lot the level of engagement of national authorities. On the other hand, without commitment and regulations, there is not much impact that we can generate. We also need to show something that is a well-planned sequence of events and initiatives that can show immediate results to local partners /cities/citizens to start to give a sense of long-term vision. For the actions (processes) a Thriving Community wants and needs to do, it needs time, which is why long-term thinking, planning, programming and partnering is so critical yet not easy to achieve. Sometimes policymakers are very far from ‘real’ work and other sectors, so it is essential to show existing examples so they could change law/rules/regulations to support ‘green path’. A thriving community should lead policy through evidence and providing solutions.

Smarter Systems

Learning, information, and insights around the value from ‘smarter’ data and associated digital technology systems should be helping us to do things more effectively. Smart solutions are part of the problem and the systems we wants to address, and hence not a ‘panacea’. They are not bringing value alone, but when combined in a synergistic way with other social solutions.

The thriving communities, catalysts for system innovation, need to consider their role in data quality and accessibility, focusing more on raising awareness of open data to facilitate Smarter Systems. If data are not uniformly collected and shared, then the projects’ outcomes will vary, giving poor insights and intelligence. The digital transition goes hands in hands with green just transition in the EU vision. Can the Hubs — acting as thriving communities — become a reference point for data insights- offering this as a service to the ecosystem and systems mapping?

Conclusions

After deep listening and harvesting, our reflections lead us to some final remarks.

The thriving communities identify the pivotal role of arts and to imagine new economic systems and technological innovation, putting the human and the ecosystems back at the centre of our societies.

We learned that we tend to think modestly, usually guided by specific projects which, by definition, have specific scope and goals, and specific roles for each partner. However, we may think of a more ambitious role for the Hubs, the Thriving Communities, to impact our countries, and then Europe. There is a lot of potential because we have:

1. Built an extensive network of stakeholders, and
2. A common and robust reasoning framework and tools to offer to the transformation of our systems.
3. The right context (European Green deal)
4. Resources (as money are not a problem, the issue is how to access).

What is making the Hubs different, making them Thriving Communities, is their view on all of the elements that are part of the Enablers of change. More than making the change happen, those Communities can facilitate the national/regional transformation. In other words, they can understand and interpret the system where they are, inform actions and decision making. They can thrive the change, once they know the potential of their actions, being a connector for wider society, through dedicated instruments, workshops, events and participatory actions exactly because they are not isolated, but part of their communities.

Finally, we learned that “harvesting is not only listening, picking the fruit. It is squeezing and producing the juice’. It is reflecting to inform transformative actions.

To read more about our work on Thriving Communities in Southern East Europe, check the rest of this publication.

Thank you to all the participants from EIT RIS Hubs and the work of the whole EIT Climate-KIC RIS team for the valuable insights!

[1] EIT Hubs are meeting points between EIT Innovation Community and local players and represent a group of already existing place-based entities that join forces for the purpose of fostering climate innovation in a specific country or region.

[2] There is a famous Peter Drucker quote that says that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This implies that the culture of your company always determines success regardless of how effective your strategy may be.