The EU 1.5° Lifestyles project team is currently preparing the second round of Citizen Thinking Labs and Stakeholder Thinking Labs in five case countries, which will be supplemented by an EU Stakeholder Thinking Lab in Brussels to engage with EU policymakers and experts. As part of the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project’s aim to mainstream 1.5° lifestyles and provide tools and policies, part of our research focuses on transformative strategies for households and on structural constraints and enablers for 1.5° lifestyles. To assess challenges and opportunities from the full range of social perspectives, we already conducted Stakeholder and Citizen Thinking Labs in five case countries in the past.
During the second round of our Citizen Thinking Labs, we will work together with around 100 citizens, 20-25 citizens in each of the five case countries – Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Spain and Sweden – to take a look at a 1.5° lifestyle future: “What will our future look like around 2030?” Together with the research team, participants will work in small groups to develop their visions of the future:
- What will our everyday life be like?
- Will the housing situation have changed?
- Will there be a new "normal" for transport?
- How will we spend our leisure time and what will our cities look like?
After envisioning our sustainable future, citizens will develop pathways on how we got there from today and discuss the dilemmas in society, politics, technology, and culture that had to be overcome along the way, and how this was made possible.
These research efforts will be complemented by a Stakeholder Thinking Lab on the EU-level, which will bring together key players and actors from policy, civil society, business, and the media, to provide a space for deliberation, strategizing, and networking. EU decisionmakers and experts will identify obstructions to change, share ideas on how to overcome them, and map relevant stakeholders as well as action points.
For the second round of Stakeholder Thinking Labs on the case country level, planned for late 2023, we are planning to bring together leading experts from the academic, political, and economic field in localised discussions on key issues, filling knowledge gaps and corroborating research from different work packages in the project. These localised stakeholders thinking lab “debates” will substantiate the results of the first round to provide a basis for the finalised assessment of goals and responsibilities for structural change towards 1.5° lifestyles.
We look forward to days of inspiration, lively discussion and insight into our future world through the eyes of our fellow citizens and diverse expert opinions.
Maren Tornow - adelphi; Jeremy Philipp - University of Münster
Picture: Neele Janssen - University of Münster