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The data used in the notebook. Gathered from Atlas of Utopias

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Title,Organisation,Location,Location - geographic,,Category,Year,Website,Text,Population size
Keep water in public hands!,African Center for Advocacy (ACA),"YAOUNDE, CAMEROON",,,WATER ,2021–2022,http://www.we-advocate.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Ten years of water privatization have affected about 43% of the Cameroonian population, with women and children bearing the brunt. In 2019, African Center for Advocacy (ACA) launched the «Keep Water in Public Hands» campaign with a coalition of civil society, media, unions and grassroots organisations to stop the corporate agenda of forcing the government to privatize water. This movement has contributed to stopping water privatization and to advancing the human right to water in Cameroon.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The conditions that prompted Cameroon to privatise the public water service in 2008 are once again multiplying on the ground. Between untimely water cuts, deterioration of installations and bad management practices, the public company (Camwater) which produces and distributes drinking water, is struggling to provide it in quantity and quality to an ever-growing population.
Back then, privatization was supposed to deliver improved infrastructure and lower prices — but neither materialized. Though the water was renationalized in 2018, numerous shortcomings continue to hamper the provision of clean water to the population.
In 2022, Camwater confessed its role in the drinking water crisis. According to the company, the episodic shortages observed in the capital are mainly linked to the numerous malfunctions of the Akomnyada water collection and treatment station, located 35 km east of the city. According to official figures, the demand for drinking water in Yaoundé and Mbalmayo, two towns supplied by the Akomnyada catchment station, is currently around 300,000 m3 per day.
Faced with the state’s “inability” to effectively provide public water service, the African Center for Advocacy (ACA) has increased lobbying, media advocacy as well as labour engagements to push for reduced taxes for any household that consumes less than 20 cubic meters of water per month. ACA has enjoined the national water distribution company to establish water pricing by categorizing the price per cubic meter of water by the type of customer. This greatly increased the number of low-income households connected to the water system. They are also monitoring privatization threats and pressing the government to invest on rehabilitation projects and taking responsibility.
The ACA will not give up its fight as long as the cloud of privatisation hangs over the water sector in Cameroon. Their goal is the recognition of the right to water in the Cameroonian constitution.",
Valencia walks towards the future: the cycling revolution in Valencia,Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PMUS),"VALENCIA, SPAIN",,,ENERGY,2021–2022,https://www.valencia.es/val/inici,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
For decades, Valencia was a city that revered motor vehicles and boasted about the quantity and fluidity of its traffic. However, in the summer of 2015, the municipal authorities took a step towards reversing this situation. The climate emergency scenario demanded it, but also the desire to improve the quality of life of its inhabitants, who, with the promotion of cycling and the new pedestrianisation, save energy and improve their economy.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Valencia is a city where public space once again belongs to citizens, rather than cars, and people are no longer pedestrians. The sustainable mobility promoted by Valencia City Council has brought about ambitious and fundamental changes that generate individual and collective health. Apart from urban planning focused on responding to the climate emergency, it is necessary to change living habits, reduce travel and encourage local consumption.
Certain stretches of Valencia’s cycle network of almost 170 kilometres see around 7,000 vehicles per day, and the use of this sustainable mode of transport has increased by 21% in the last year. According to calculations by the Department of Sustainable Mobility, each kilometre of cycle lane represents an energy saving of 0.214%. Since the approval in 2013 of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PMUS) until now, the cycling network in Valencia has grown by 44 kilometres – 36% – which, added to the nine kilometres planned for next year, will mean an energy saving of 11% by 2023.
Although the city’s first cycle lane was built in 1982, the network has since undergone not only mileage extensions, but also improvements to the route, safety and parking facilities that have led to more and more people opting for this mode of transport: it is estimated that three out of every ten people cycling on the network in 2021 were previously commuting by private car.
The criteria applied to determine the areas where cycle lanes are to be provided were the aforementioned SUMP, the result of the proposals made by the public in the participatory budgets and requests made by the council itself in the annual budgets.
The majority of people who move around the city do so on foot (around 50%), by bicycle (6%) or by public transport (16%): only around 15% use private vehicles to move around the city.",
Building the movement for agroecological urban gardening to ensure food sovereignty,The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP),"PENANG, MALAYSIA",,,FOOD,2021–2022,https://consumer.org.my/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
This agroecological urban farming movement is a positive vision based on the principles of simple, low-cost, traditional, healthy sustainable food that challenges the dominant narrative of the industrial food system. They demonstrate that you can grow your own food anywhere – small yard, balcony, or street corner. This project connects people to nature and each other, creating a movement of small farmers and urban dwellers who are together building a sustainable future and ensuring food sovereignty.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) has been championing and setting the standards behind the urban garden/farm concept for over a decade. Due to the hike in food prices, the nation’s lack of food security and serious concerns about higher oil prices and food shortages, the green wave in Penang seems to be picking up among the young and the old, especially among those living in the urban areas.
The association began the Natural Farming Project twenty years ago, organising awareness programmes nationally to educate farmers about the dire consequences of using chemicals to grow food and to introduce alternative, natural farming techniques. Over the years, the project was extended to homes and schools to educate the larger community on the importance of growing their own food.
When the Home Garden Project was launched, it attracted urbanites who were becoming more aware of environmental issues and concerned about eating chemical-laden food, opting to grow their own. For Penangites who live in high-rise buildings, CAP has been promoting vertical planting units too. They teach households to turn their kitchen waste into compost and growth promoters instead of discarding the waste, and they train people to make chemical-free compost and home-made fertilisers.
In order to educate the young in schools and the older population through various associations, they provide the technical know-how to start a farm, edible gardens and herbal corners. Thanks to it, the Senior Citizens Association in Penang today have an eco-farm in their new premises, keeping members active and healthy, and the Green Squad from SMK Convent Butterworth school is getting students involved and winning awards such as the Green Flag awarded by WWF Malaysia.
Another effort CAP has embarked on lately is to encourage farmers and the public in general to save their own seeds and share them with friends and neighbours. In this way, future seeds will become more adaptive and be able to sustain and grow in particular climatic and soil conditions, without relying on what big agri-businesses want to sell.",
Rainwater harvesting in Mexico City’s marginalized neighborhoods,Isla Urbana,"MEXICO CITY, MEXICO",,,WATER ,2021–2022,https://islaurbana.org/english/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
The expanding water crisis in Mexico and abroad calls for sustainable, effective, and innovative solutions that contribute to the creation of sustainable water management models. Isla Urbana firmly believes that rainwater harvesting, capacity building and water culture promotion, public policy development, and, above all, high quality work based on empathy, are key elements for a much-needed water paradigm shift.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Although rainwater harvesting systems are not new to Mexico, governments haven’t taken them seriously enough to invest in. However, Isla Urbana, an organization run by an interdisciplinary group of designers, urbanists, engineers, anthropologists, educators and artists, has partnered up with the local and regional governments to provide clean water through rainwater harvesting programs, and to ease the drought plaguing Mexico’s most vulnerable populations, particularly in the three most important cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey.
For these solutions to succeed, subsidy programs have to be designed and implemented in collaboration with local and regional governments and/or private investors, and they must address the most vulnerable communities, priorly identified as the ones who would benefit the most from these technologies. The standard systems implemented in urban contexts, for example, are designed to fit in small spaces and have a storage of 2,500 liters (550 gallons), provide 3 and up to 9 months of water autonomy depending on the region, and the water can be used for all domestic purposes, even drinking. Since 2009, Isla Urbana has installed over 30,000 such systems around Mexico, impacting more than 200,000 people.
The system’s effectiveness also relies on its users’ water habits, and particularly the level of adoption, achieved through education programs to utilize and maintain the technology, and to promote a responsible use of water. For that, the technology must be accompanied by capacity building, public policies, incentives and ongoing support. Isla Urbana does follow up visits to see if the technology is working and help people to develop a different relationship with water with, for example, lessons in schools about water culture for new generations of users, design of educational and didactic material, group and one-on-one training, and dissemination activities.
By the end of the year 2023, they expect to have rainwater harvesting storage systems and filtering technology in and additional 12,000 households and 250 schools, impacting 65,000 people.",
Entrepatios Madrid,Entrepatios Las Carolinas cooperative,"MADRID, SPAIN",,,HOUSING ,2021–2022,,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Entrepatios is a neighbourhood community residing in a right-to-use cooperative housing building in Madrid since 2020. The high environmental standards of the building are combined with a democratic and collective organization that is sensitive to the differences among the inhabitants. Its intense community life is connected to the neighbourhood, trying to practise in the present what is desired for the cities of the future.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Entrepatios is the first ecological building with right of use in Spain that has been built between the centre of Madrid and the suburbs. It is a cohousing project, which means that it is the neighbours, members of the cooperative, who, through a participatory decision-making process, have decided on everything from the ecological materials to be used in the construction of the building to what part of the budget will be allocated to the insulation of the building and the type of air conditioning, among other things.
Communal spaces make up 15% of the building: a communal courtyard; a room that serves as a children’s play area and as a space for weekly food distribution; a garage with mainly bicycles; a room dedicated to housing a large cistern where rainwater is collected, treated and used for toilets and gardening, by drip; a workshop room where neighbours work with their hands; a communal laundry; and a rooftop dedicated to adult leisure. The child population accounts for almost half of the total, some twenty children between the ages of two and twelve.
The Entrepatios Las Carolinas cooperative is made up of the fifty-three people who live in its seventeen dwellings. Depending on the size of their dwelling, they have paid between 40,000 and 50,000 euros as a down payment, an amount that will be returned if they leave the cooperative and replaced by those who move in. The ownership of the building remains in the hands of the cooperative and its members use the homes, but never own them. The regime of cession of use is practically unknown in Spain and the lack of regulation makes the administrative process difficult.
To date, there are forty other housing projects in the pipeline, including a second Entrepatios building. The residents are still working to define their own rules.",
"Social, cultural, and economic empowerment in Bukit Duri Urban Kampung reconstruction",Ciliwung Merdeka,"JAKARTA, INDONESIA",,,HOUSING ,2021–2022,,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Kampung Susun Produktif Tumbuh is one of the symbols of community victory against forced eviction in Jakarta. The rebuilt Bukit Duri settlement stands for urban kampung life; that is, a socially, culturally, and economically tight-knit community in a spatial unit. In support of human agency in housing development, the design is purposely flexible to allow each family to expand when opportunities come. It also provides conduits for rainwater, reflecting the first-hand experience of Bukit Durit residents as a flood-resilient community.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
In 2016, seventy families were evicted from their homes in Bukit Duri, Jakarta, as part of efforts to mitigate the city’s persistent flooding problems. The eviction, however, was later ruled to be illegal. In 2017, the State Administrative Court found that the eviction had no legal basis and that the residents were entitled to compensation.
A group of volunteers belonging to the organization Ciliwung Merdeka worked with the residents, from children to adults, to empower the community through several programmes to foster solidarity and independence. These included an education programme for children, public health education, waste handling and management, economic empowerment, art and culture education, disaster response and mitigation, spatial planning and architecture. In addition, together they lobbied the government demanding that poor citizens deserved proper living conditions and showing them that there was indeed an alternative to eviction.
This alternative was then materialized in the Kampung Susun new residence and cooperative, where the residents themselves take responsibility for the care of the whole neighborhood. Residents do not pay rent, they are only obligated to pay a maintenance fee to the cooperative, which can also lend the residents business capital.
Kampung Susun Cakung will be one of the first public housing projects in Jakarta to have a modern design tailored to the residents’ needs: a proper place for families to live, grow businesses and build a community, where they can interact with and help each other. Each unit is about 36 squares meter and consists of both a personal and productive space. The productive space provides a place for residents to manage and grow their business. This is a significant feature and the result of the participatory process.",
100% renewable energy for Gaza,Friends of the Earth Palestine,"GAZA, PALESTINE",,,ENERGY,2021–2022,http://www.pengon.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Clean Energy Initiative in Gaza strip aims to find effective solutions for energy scarcity in Gaza, bringing light and hope for Gazan people. The Clean Energy Initiative eliminates darkness in Gaza by bringing clean energy into community hands, with a special focus on empowering women as Sustainable Energy Leaders. The initiative brings women together to transform the energy system in Palestine and to lead the decision-making processes in the clean energy sector.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The goal of Friends of the Earth Palestine (PENGON) in Gaza is to provide renewable energy to the Palestinian population, who live under darkness as a result of the Israeli blockade for sixteen years. PENGON works together with its member organizations to install solar panels as a solution. The organisation targets 900 families, six schools with 6000 students, twenty female-led community organisations, and twenty-five other Palestinian organisations. In addition, they coordinate a group of fourteen Palestinian environmental NGOs and visit communities affected by energy scarcity.
In the centre of the Gaza Strip, in Waddi Alsalqa village, the Rural Women’s Development Society together with PENGON, has been able to install thirty two solar panels and batteries to power the kitchen where women cook and provide food for sale to the rest of the community. Prior to the installation of these solar panels, their work was constantly affected by prolonged power outages adding up to their hardships. Now, they count on independent energy efficiency and are able to invest the money used to pay the public electricity distribution company on themselves.
In the northern Gaza Strip are of Alwaha, near the Gaza-Israeli border, another eighteen solar panels were installed in a local farm. This solar panel-generated electricity helps to light the farm, power the greenhouse and pump water from a well. The biggest challenge here is to replace expired batteries and repair solar panels that are hit by Israeli army missiles.
The solar panel project was set up to support women’s participation and leadership in the context of low social acceptance and scant state support. This project gives women space to improve their skills at community and organisation level, and to be more active in lobbying and advocacy spaces for influencing gender laws and energy policies.\",
"No Bicycle, No Planet",Friends of the Earth El Salvador (CESTA),"GUAZAPA, EL SALVADOR",,,ENERGY ,2021–2022,https://cesta-foe.org.sv/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
To reduce the impacts of climate change, CESTA’s “No Bicycle, No Planet” campaign promotes bicycle transport in Guazapa, with bicycle ordinances, cycle routes, 6 women with bicycle workshops and road safety education for 1,000 young people. At the national level, fifty bicycle workshops have been established, of which twenty are run by women, 5000 students have received road safety education, a bicycle promotion law was passed, twelve municipalities now have bicycle ordinances, and are building bicycle lanes.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The programme ‘No bicycle, no planet’ in Guazapa, a municipality with few public transportation options located 24 kilometres north of El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, sets an example for the use of bikes as a sign of freedom, sustainability and empowerment for the rest of the country.
Friends of the Earth El Salvador (CESTA) programme’s three fundamental components are: work with the municipality, work with educational centres, and implementation of activities to engage women.
As well as revolutionising transport by promoting the use of bicycles, the project has empowered women, delivering increased autonomy and sustainability. In bicycle repair workshops, women have been taught new skills that they are now using in their own repair stores, thus providing income for their family and teaching their children to do the same. In this way, women are gaining financial independence and breaking the stereotype that bicycle-related jobs can only be done by men.
In a space called ‘network of workshops’, which brings together more than fifty active women, they work to promote bicycle use with mass cycling events and to demand safer spaces for bikes and cyclist-friendly road signs. Young people in educational centres are also demanding the same, and the municipality and community is responding positively to their demands.
To date, the municipality has approved an ordinance to promote the use of bicycles and has allocated resources to make the roads safer for cyclists. At the national level, the central government has enabled bicycle lanes and begun to limit the speed of automobiles on some roads to 30km/h. Twelve other municipalities have emulated Guazapa but the hope is that many more also will follow suit.",
Women for Food Sovereignty in Cochabamba,Women In Progress of Carcaje,"COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA",,,FOOD,2021–2022,https://cioeccochabamba.com/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
The Women In Progress of Carcaje organization is a group of fifteen women dedicated to the production and commercialization of organic vegetables under an associative and solidarity economy scheme. This enterprise, identified by the EcoMujer brand and certified by the SPG (Participatory Guarantee System), promotes ecology and the social and economic empowerment of women, and fights for the food security of women rural producers and the preservation of biodiversity to be included in public policy agendas.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The Organización Social de Mujeres en Progreso de Complejo Carcaje – Azirumani “Bartolina Sisa” is twenty kilometres away from the city of Cochabamba. The region where they live, the Valle Alto, was known as the granary of Bolivia, and used to produce maize, wheat and potatoes. In the last decade, the intense use of chemical fertilizers and the effects of climate change have reduced organic production, damaged the environmental ecosystem and dismantled the formerly strong food sovereignty relationships.
Since 2014, eleven women began to dedicate themselves entirely to growing vegetables and rescuing organic farming practices, recovering seeds and natural bio-inputs. Their most difficult challenge was to become productive, be economically sustainable and capable of self-managing and organising themselves. They went from monoculture to producing many different types of vegetables in their family gardens, such as cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce, among others. The water harvesting and automated irrigation allows them to have continuity in irrigation and to save water. They prioritize healthy self-consumption in their families and a renewable and varied system with plants that revitalize the soil.
Their strength is the organisation and the weekly meetings where they weigh the vegetables, fill out control sheets, follow up on their individual earnings and plan future harvests according to the season and to market demands. On the organisational side, the women have developed different skills, such as decision-making, conflict management, and long-term strategic objectives. The organisation is also succeeding in gaining a voice in political spaces in the municipality, fighting for the introduction of sustainable policies that promote food sovereignty in their territory.
Thanks to the help of other organisations, an associative marketing proposal has been developed. In this way, they were able to open a direct sales market in Cochabamba to sell their products, the Kampesino shop. They certify and promote their products with the ‘EcoMujer’ brand, with the aim of valuing the dignified work of women throughout the production process, making them visible as farmers, caregivers, processors and marketers, so that they are no longer unknown and undervalued.",
Linking urban consumers to rural producers,Sahaja Aharam,"HYDERABAD, INDIA",,,FOOD,2021–2022,https://sahajaaharam.com/about-us,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Sahaja Aaharam is an Independent Farmer Produce Company promoted by the Center for Sustainable Agriculture. It is dedicated to connecting and creating awareness among farmers and consumers through producer co-operatives. They aim to ensure maximum financial and economic benefit to the farmers, to provide nutritional food choices to the consumers and to bring ecological benefits to the environment.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The not-for-profit Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA), which works with farmers, formed Sahaja Aharam in 2014 as the bridge between food growers and consumers. It’s a federation of over a dozen cooperatives to create a small farmers’ organic brand and store: Sahaja Aharam, which means Natural Food in the Telugu language. This is an organic brand evolving out of the collectivization of small and marginal farmers to create a local food system that aspires to be sustainable and chemical-free.
CSA handholds producer collectives, builds capacities and provides important services, and connects them to markets and end-consumers. They also hold awareness programmes and events for urban consumers to educate them about their food systems.
Sahaja Aharam has decentralised systems: aggregation, primary processing, secondary value addition at local village or cluster-level hubs that are cost-effective and manageable. Sahaja does not allow its perishables to go waste. Through solar food dryers, they convert the waste or unsold greens into dried vegetables to extend their shelf life and sell in a different way to buyers.
Each of the Sahaja cooperatives is unique, non-replicable and scalable; the structures and designs of the organization are adaptable to different conditions.
Sahaja Aharam is a model of community-managed local food systems. They succeeded in tapping markets at a time when the Indian government was opening up food retail to multinational corporations.
One of the participating cooperatives, the Gayathri Mahila Rythula Mutually-aided Cooperative Society is a caste- and age-diverse community of 250 women farmer members that produces and sells organic food to consumers in the city. The strength of the collective lies in standing together, learning together, and sharing the journey together. They also distribute free seeds to anybody within the village. Most members of the group are marginal farmers who have over the years managed to win their most important title: a land title. More than merely producing and selling the organic products, the collective has brought about a fundamental change in the way people view women farmers and farming.",
Relocation of road construction project affected slum dwellers,Kirtipur Sambriddha Awas,"KIRTIPUR, NEPAL",,,HOUSING,2021–2022,https://www.lumanti.org.np/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Kirtipur Housing Project is the first planned urban relocation project in Nepal. This project gave a successful alternative to forced eviction. The project was initiated by Kathmandu Metropolitan City in partnership with Lumanti a non-profit making organization dedicated to the alleviation of poverty in Nepal through the improvement of shelter, and the communities, to relocate the slum families affected by the road construction project. A total of forty-three families were relocated to a green and spacious settlement with each house built on 444 sq.ft of land. Establishment of an ‘Urban Community Support Fund’ proved to be a successful approach in the sustainability of the project.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Seventeen years have gone, the original owners and their families still live in the Kirtipur Housing Project. When the homeless families living in the slums received a three-day eviction notice due to the construction of a new road, the Lumanti Support Group for Shelter sought a permanent, long-term solution that would work out for all the parties concerned: the families needed a home, the municipality needed the road, and the government needed rules and regulations adhered to.
First, the Urban Community Support Fund was established with the mayor as the chairperson, Lumanti as its secretariat and the representation of slum dwellers, the private sector, and the civil society on the board. They found a plot of land auctioned by a bank and the resettlement project won the bid. The land is collectively owned by the community. Only the houses built on that land could be owned by the residents but not the land itself. Houses would be paid for by the owners over 15 years through regular installment payments.
After that, architects were assigned and house and community designs were explored in a participatory way. Housing plots were distributed through a lottery system to avoid unfair distribution of locations. When construction started, the soon to be residents monitored progress and quality of material and labour.
Essential amenities had to be set up. Road access to houses was part of the plan and construction but private electricity lines, water connections, sewage, and more had to be set up. The community became an example on how rainwater harvesting could be achieved, and managed. There was no sewage system in the area, so a reed-based wastewater treatment system was set up, which hasbecome an example nationwide. These were important interventions as it was only 15 years later that the municipality could provide drinking water to every household in the neighbourhood.
Now, thanks to the cooperation and partnership of different groups, everyone in the community has work, no one has issues related to livelihood and the quality of life is a lot better.",
Million Wells Bengaluru,Mannu Vaddars,"BENGALURU, INDIA",,,WATER,2021–2022,http://biometrust.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Bengaluru City meets a large part of its water needs from deep groundwater. As Bengaluru gets paved over, recharge from rainfall reduces, and the city floods. If the residents and institutions of the city dig a million wells, it would not only help send rainwater to replenish the water table and mitigate flooding but also help revive the livelihoods of the Mannu Vaddars, a traditional but marginalized well-digging community.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Bengaluru sits on the rocky Deccan Plateau. Without a river or a coastline nearby, the city initially relied on water from its wells and tanks (man-made lakes), many of which are centuries old. As the city grew, water was piped from the River Kaveri, 100 km away. However, the city’s water utility has not been able to keep up with Bengaluru’s rapid growth, and deep groundwater from borewells has been widely used to make up for the shortfall. As the extraction of groundwater has been largely unregulated, it has led to Bengaluru’s deep aquifer levels dropping to alarming levels.
The Million Wells campaign by Biome Environmental Trust is an ecological literacy campaign that encourages citizens to take responsibility for collectively managing and conserving groundwater. It aims to inculcate a sustainable water culture – one where the citizens become stewards of their shared natural resources and where water becomes visible again. This connection has been lost after the advent of borewells, because the link between the source and the resource is hidden from the eye.
Over the past seven years, the communication campaign to build awareness, educate and help citizens change their behaviours around water usage has helped build a sense of collective ownership over the shallow aquifer, and many communities have set their own targets for digging wells. In addition, by focusing on the livelihoods of the marginalised community of well-diggers, the campaign has integrated their traditional knowledge and skills into the process of open well revival, which has restored and improved their livelihoods and self-worth.
The Million Wells campaign in Bengaluru responds rather innovatively to the urgency of India’s water and sanitation crisis with the revival of the shallow aquifer and its focus on traditional knowledge and marginalised communities in urban environments. The central government has taken notice of it, and plans to roll it out in 500 towns and cities across India.",
Agua Para Todos tackles water privatization and the impact of climate change,Unión de Agua Potable Rural de la Cuenca del Río Petorca,"PETORCA, CHILE",,,WATER,2020,http://www.aguaparatodos.cl/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
The triple challenges of water privatization, expanding agribusiness and the impact of climate change have caused a water crisis in the commune of Petorca, Valparaiso, Chile, where over 6000 people – mostly women and older people – live with a precarious water supply. Water for All is an initiative of the Unión de Agua Potable Rural (ARP), which generates sustainable solutions to the water crisis, strengthens community mobilization, uses socially appropriate technology to conserve and reclaim water, and provides environmental education.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Created in 2014 and with very little state support, we supply drinking water to rural communities in Petorca. One of our first actions was to forge alliances with institutions that understand water as a human right and common good, including the University of Playa Ancha and the local government’s Office of Water Affairs. We also took to the streets in protest during the worst water shortages to show our despair at seeing our people sick and our animals dying because of lack of water. These radical actions have attracted media attention and pushed the authorities to take emergency measures.
Our work in collaboration with residents in the commune has resulted in the guaranteeing and protection of water rights; new regulations guaranteeing water-source protection from contamination; treatment, recycling and reuse of sewage; harvesting water from rooftops and atmospheric surface runoff. We also have participatory monitoring of water quality – for example, through training and the use of a community water quality kit we’ve increased community participation in the care and sustainable use of water. We have also attended congress on different occasions to demand a change to the water law. The municipal government has been most receptive to our call, with the municipality of Petorca creating the Office of Water Affairs, the first of its kind in Chile.
Guaranteeing water has allowed us to “sow the future”, to show that it is possible to stay in the state and build a dignified life. And by acting to improve community water systems, we have improved the quality of life of Petorca families through better access to drinking water.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the situation in our state: many rural residents do not have easy access to potable water, and the water they consume from emergency trucks is of very low quality. This precarious access to water in the face of a pandemic has been linked with several cases of the virus in the province. This has led to complaints of human rights violations being filed with the National Institute of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.",
The municipality of Burgas pioneers energy efficient housing in Bulgaria,Burgas energy efficient housing,"BURGAS, BULGARIA",,,ENERGY,2020,https://www.burgas.bg/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Fifteen years ago, the Bulgarian town of Burgas was highly energy inefficient, leading to very high energy costs for local authorities and citizens, as well as poor living conditions and environmental inequality. Today it is a different story. Burgas is a smart, energy efficient city implementing the most up-to-date energy approaches and measures, and demonstrates the power of local authorities to drive sustainable change.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Energy efficiency was one of the priorities we laid down in Burgas Municipality’s Municipal Plans and Sustainable Energy Action Plan between 2007 and 2020. Today, the entire population of Burgas Municipality (232,000 people) have directly or indirectly benefitted from our decision. All public buildings have been retrofitted, providing better living conditions for inhabitants. Children, young people and teachers have benefitted from the retrofitting of 98% of kindergartens and schools, and local businesses have benefitted from investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, which in turn has helped them to develop and grow.
The council’s huge investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, efficient street lighting, and smart management systems – implemented with the support of EU funds, and state and private resources – are turning the city into a smart and sustainable place to live.
We established a special directorate, specialised in the development and implementation of EU-funded projects, as most of the measures were implemented with the support of the EU. Additional municipal experts in energy efficiency and energy audits and climate change were employed to maximise the benefits from these measures.
Citizens are now actively searching for ways to retrofit their homes. Our municipality is now leading the country when it comes to energy efficient living, with more than 200 residential buildings retrofitted under the National EE Programme and the number of hybrid and e-vehicles in the city constantly rising.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
The COVID-19 outbreak had no drastic impact on our implementation of energy efficiency measures, as some of them took place before the emergence of the epidemic. Those initiatives that are currently being implemented in ways that comply fully with national requirements to prevent the spread of COVID-19.",
"CaSanAT is a micro-utopia serving as a space for exchange, learning and resistance",Amigos de la Tierra Brasil / Amigos da Terra Brasil,"PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL",,,HOUSING,2020,http://www.amigosdaterrabrasil.org.br/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
CaSanAT (an abbreviation of ‘house’ and ‘nature’ in Portuguese) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, is a space for social activists and volunteers to come together for community discussions and action on socio-environmental issues. As such, it is fighting hunger, the pandemic and repression by the Bolsonaro government. Today, as a space for social organization and education in thinking about city, it is working to strengthen communities and act as a hub for the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Construction of the CaSanAT centre started in around 2004, when a derelict building was converted using solar and other clean technologies. The walls are plastered with lime and not cement, almost all the bricks, frames and doors were recycled, and the plants in the backyard provide food and shelter on hot days. The patio has bananas all year round, along with passion fruit, herbs and avocado. CaSanAT has established a local fairtrade farmers’ market, and a library containing a collection of more than 3,000 cataloged publications on the environment and documents containing the history of the gaúcho people and Brazilian environmental movements. The centre has also enabled people to reclaim their right to the centre of the city and has reached out to the wider community and various indigenous communities in the hope that – as a model – it might be replicated elsewhere.
The centre has this year been targeted for closure by the Bolsonaro government – a move that the centre challenged in court, and from which it has won a temporary reprieve. The battle did not deter the centre from running its operation to help people struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic. By distributing food and hygiene products to thousands of families, the centre has been plugging gaps left by the Bolsonaro government’s handling of the pandemic.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
Since March of 2020, CaSanAT has acted as a repository for fairly traded food and hygiene products bought through donations. The involvement of different political actors and social movements and the solidarity shown during Covid19 has united local, working class communities in the face of the pandemic and the oppression by the Bolsonaro government.",
Penca de Sábila Corporation improves the lives of rural farmers and connects them with urban communities,Corporación Ecológica y Cultural Penca de Sábila,"MEDELLÍN, COLOMBIA",,,FOOD,2020,http://www.corpenca.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Penca de Sábila Corporation is successfully helping 12,000 small-scale farming families in rural Medellín to transition towards agroecology (organic farming. Their method uses fair marketing and selling of surplus directly through a cooperative store, the creation of legal instruments for the protection of the territory’s peasants and the formation of alliances with peasant associations and universities. The economic benefits are shared annually in assemblies in which all smallholder families participate. The corporation is also putting rural farmers’ needs on the state’s agenda, and is calling for support for them against the backdrop of COVID-19.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
To date we have set up two peasant associations made up of farms that produce food agroecologically (whereby the use of pesticides in agricultural activities is reduced or eliminated), and market and sell their produce through the Colyflor Solidarity Economic Circuit (a fair-trade rural producers network). In addition, we’ve successfully pushed for the Rural Peasant District of Medellín to be included in Medellín’s recent Territorial Organization Plans and in the region’s development plans.
Through training on agroecology principles, run by the School of Agroecology, skills and capacity have been extended to dozens of young people and small-scale farmers in the region, while social mobilization for the defence of peasant rights (involving meetings, forums, debates, marches, sit-ins, seed exchanges, collection of signatures) has also been achieved.
This work has benefitted 104 peasant farmers and organisations that are part of the Colyflor Store supplier network. We’ve also set up the Valle de Aburrá Peasant Assembly, an alliance between families and peasant organizations in the Valle de Aburrá bioregion.
Our work shows it is essential to promote peasants’ rights and agroecology as an alternative production model as it is directly linked to an improvement in the health of producers, consumers and ecosystems, given the close link that exists between human, animal and ecological health.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
In Medellín, the COVID-19 crisis has put the importance of food sovereignty centre stage, alongside the needs of the peasant population living on the outskirts of the city. We denounced how COVID-19 plans showed a lack of institutional support for rural communities to guarantee the distribution of their crops, and the unacceptable paradox that saw farming families lose their unsold crops while families in city neighborhoods went hungry. It appears that concern or awareness for responsible consumption has increased among parts of the population, and that rural people’s issues have found their place (to some degree) on the public, political and media agenda of those with power in urban areas.",
‘Our Water Our Right’ campaign mobilization against water privatisation,Environmental Rights Action (ERA) – Friends of the Earth Nigeria,"LAGOS, NIGERIA",,,WATER,"2019, 2018",http://www.erafoen.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Since 2014, the ‘Our Water Our Rights’ Campaign has mobilised civil society, labour and grassroots groups to resist water privatisation across Lagos, and broadened citizen engagement in resolving the city’s water crisis. Against the odds, it has also increased government spending on water and sanitation in the city.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
When ERA learned that Lagos state government was secretly negotiating a public-private partnership for its water supply – in a city already severely underserved in terms of water services – it decided to launch its own investigation, working with a range of national and international organisations to mobilise citizens across the capital. This entailed not only making people aware of the government’s plans to privatise their water utilities, but also to educate them about what privatisation would imply.
The campaign targeted the company Visionscape Sanitation Solutions, which had the sole contract for waste management in Lagos and was also part of a public-private partnership for water. People posted photos on social media to show how dirty their streets had become since Visionscape took over waste management in Lagos. As a result the company’s waste contract was terminated and the government took back control of waste management.
The campaign has also had more structural successes such as the cancellation of the government’s contract with the World Bank as an advisor in the privatisation scheme; pushing the government to reserve US$185 million dollars in its budget for clean water access; and uniting many different organisations, social movements and communities in Lagos under one message. While privatisation plans are still on the government’s agenda, our campaign continues until the goal of water as a constitutionalised human right is achieved.",
Barcelona Energia,Barcelona en Comú,"BARCELONA, SPAIN",,,ENERGY,2019,https://barcelonaencomu.cat/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Since February 2018, Barcelona City Council’s public electricity distributor Barcelona Energia has managed the electricity market for all the energy generated by the city and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area – some 200 GWh/year. Barcelona Energia is one of the great triumphs of ‘Brave Barcelona’, which is standing up to corporate lobbies and achieving autonomy and power for its citizens.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Since July 2018, Barcelona Energía (BE), a public renewable energy company that offers an alternative to large corporate energy providers, has been managing the electricity of the city council and a growing number of citizens. This is part of the municipality’s plan to achieve energy self-sufficiency by installing solar panels on the roofs of publicly owned buildings, such as libraries, markets and civic centres.
A working group comprising the municipal group of the city council and the ecological movement of Barcelona in Comú created BE to challenge the energy giants; play an active role in the energy market; fill the city with renewable, locally produced energy; improve efficiency and self-sufficiency; and place residents at the heart of decision making, guaranteeing them the right to energy.
BE is now the largest 100% public renewable electricity distributor in Spain. Cities such as Cádiz, Pamplona and Palma de Mallorca are also opting for models similar to those in Barcelona. It is an instrument to promote and encourage the local generation of renewable energy (mainly solar energy), both for municipal facilities and for residents of Barcelona (self-generation for own use).
In July 2019, BE began supplying electricity to Barcelona City Council buildings and facilities and to 19 bodies and entities in the municipal companies group, serving a total of 3,908 supply points. In 2019, it also started to provide the service to facilities in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area and to citizens, up to a maximum of 20,000 homes.",
Integrated social reconstruction homes in Isthmus of Tehuantepec,Cooperación Comunitaria A.C.,"IXTEPEC, MEXICO",,,HOUSING ,2019,http://www.cooperacioncomunitaria.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
In September 2017 the most powerful earthquake in Mexico’s history badly damaged the traditionally built homes of indigenous communities in Oaxaca. The municipal government moved in to demolish them – destroying the architectural heritage that the families depended on for their livelihoods and replacing it with modern and inadequate housing. But the intervention of local NGO Cooperación Comunitaria A.C. changed everything – galvanising the community to build homes not only able to withstand earthquakes, but also constructed using traditional techniques and tailored to the climate and culture.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The Ixtepecano Committee, a local community organisation, contacted Cooperación Comunitaria A.C to rebuild the homes. CC conducted assessments of the damage and the families’ vulnerability, including a mapping exercise, and through assemblies and meetings, a reconstruction model was agreed with the families. Traditional ovens and kitchens were included in the reconstruction with the aim of reactivating local women’s livelihoods, as was the building of an Arts and Trades Centre that would be used to train people to make kitchens using traditional building techniques. And it didn’t stop there: local maize varieties were reintroduced for the making of local staple totopos, while a series of workshops was run to improve construction skills and to train people on disaster risk management, the use of natural resources, and the right to adequate housing.
Photo credit: Cooperación Comunitaria
A.C.CC’s architects and an engineer designed plans for 78 homes – 20 new and 58 reinforced – using traditional techniques and designs, including double brick walls at a height of 4 metres, and an area of 72 m2 which allows residents to be comfortable in the hot climate. By using local materials, brick production in the area was reactivated and materials such as tiles, wood and bricks were salvaged for reuse. A guide to reinforcing traditional homes was produced and translated into the local language.
To reactivate the women’s productive businesses, special, traditional ovens were reinforced at the base to make them earthquake resistant. To date, 107 women have restored their productive businesses thanks to the rebuilding of 196 traditional ovens and kitchens, and this has contributed to the recovery of the household economy. Proposals for two model kitchens were developed by women in community design workshops; 247 people learned about the relationship between natural resources and their habitat; and 73 builders learned how to reinforce their homes, kitchens, and their bread ovens using local materials.",
Waste management innovation for food security and climate change mitigation,Dajopen Waste Management,"KITALE, KENYA",,,FOOD,2019,,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
A community in Kitale Town, Kenya, has come together to transform waste into valuable recycled products to sell – an activity designed to improve livelihoods, clean up local dwellings and the environment, and improve food and energy production.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
In Kitale, lack of clean energy for cooking, lighting and heating, and lack of fertiliser, led to the formation of community group Dajopen Waste Management. The group identified several ways to improve the situation, including collecting and recycling waste, planting trees on public land to increase forest cover, and the use of organic manure. A key aim of the initiative was to improve living conditions too, by eliminating the breeding grounds for mosquitoes, rodents and flies.
With support from Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization the group was trained to hygienically collect, process and clean waste, and to use the waste to create products such as baskets, caps, floor mats, table mats, beads, necklaces and bags. Youths were trained in making briquettes from charcoal dust and paper pulp, thus improving their social status and incomes. Men were trained to recycle plastics into fencing posts, thereby reducing the need for wooden posts, reducing deforestation, helping to secure land and homes from land grabbers, ending housing boundary conflicts. Recycled roofing tiles were also produced, making them affordable for low-income families to improve their homes. Men were also trained to make compost from biodegradable green and solid waste, and food waste.
Most community members have increased their crop yields by using organic manure, and soil fertility has increased. Using proceeds from the recycled items, the community is now able to send its children to school and to cater for their health.",
Community-led response to water pollution crisis,Fundación Abril/Plataforma de Acuerdos Públicos Comunitarios (PAPC) Públicos Comunitarios (PAPC),"COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA",,,WATER,2018,http://www.fundacionabril.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
An estimated 52% of Bolivia’s population have no access to sanitation and 80% of wastewater is not treated before re-entering the environment. The Water and Sanitation for All project aimed to guarantee the right to sanitation in the San Pedro Magisterio neighbourhood by successfully building and running a wastewater treatment plant and strengthening community management of the entire water cycle through the neighbourhood’s Cooperativa de Agua San Pedro Magisterio.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Pollution in Cochabamba’s river reached such high levels in 2012 that the government declared it an “environmental disaster”. The Water and Sanitation for All project was born from a demand and a request from a community: the San Pedro Magisterio cooperative felt the need to treat domestic wastewater in its area to avoid polluting the Rocha River and the environment.
Assemblies with all cooperative members were held to discuss the technical design of the water treatment plant, improvements to domestic use of the sewerage system, and the introduction of a new tariff structure guaranteeing the system’s economic sustainability – all of which encouraged the community to take ownership of the initiative. The cooperative committed to taking on the running of the treatment plant once built, and environmental awareness activities were held in the local school.
But it was not all plain sailing. The municipality, through its water operator, attempted to sabotage the project, criticizing the technical design of the plant and refusing to issue the environmental permits required to execute the project. It also tried to divide the community.
But the community’s unity and determination overcame this, challenging the state-municipal authorities by defending their right to manage water as a community, establishing alliances (with other neighbourhoods and public servants) to resist political pressure, and strengthening their participatory and transparent internal decision-making mechanisms. The project is now responsible for treating the wastewater from 300 families, and for improvements to the hygiene and sanitary conditions in the San Pedro neighbourhood.",
"Energy transition built on democracy, renewables and jobs",Mesa de Transición Energética de Cádiz,"CÁDIZ, SPAIN",,,ENERGY,2018,http://www.transicionenergeticacadiz.es/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
In May 2015, a coalition of citizen-candidates, Por Cádiz Sí Se Puede (For Cádiz, Yes We Can) and Ganar Cádiz (Win Cádiz) was elected to municipal government, with renewable energy as its platform. One of the new municipal government’s main objectives was to take advantage of local resources – the port and shipyards – to promote an energy transition as a way to rebuild the city’s social and productive life. This strategy is now paying dividends.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The four City of Cádiz priorities for the energy transition are savings, efficiency and renewables in public buildings; the fight against energy poverty; the promotion of a democratic energy transition; and the promotion of energy-related job creation.
These activities are carried out using profits derived from the local government’s 55% share of Électrica de Cádiz, the largest private-public electric company in the country, and are informed by two working groups on energy – both of which involve local people’s groups: The Mesa contra la Pobreza Energética (the Roundtable to Fight against Energy Poverty) and the Mesa de Transición Energética de Cádiz (MTEC, Roundtable on the Energy Transition in Cádiz).
MTEC has created a permanent space for the participation and collaboration of municipal specialists, environmental organisations, individuals, workers from the University of Cádiz and Eléctrica de Cádiz, and members of the Som Energía cooperative. It has also promoted the conversion of Eléctrica de Cádiz into a 100% renewable energy supply company, developed an energy literacy campaign, and enabled Électrica de Cádiz to improve the environmental rating of all its municipal building contracts (and of 80% of the city’s residents).
Eléctrica de Cádiz has managed to win the contracts of two other municipalities in the province, taking them out of the hands of oligopolistic companies. This was possible thanks to the inclusion of the requirement of 100% certified renewable electricity in the tender documents. MTEC’s initiatives are all taking the energy model debate to the street and to local institutions.",
Women Workers Association builds tens of thousands of homes,Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU),"SOLAPUR, INDIA",,,HOUSING,2018,http://www.knowledgecommons.in/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
In 1992, the dismal living conditions of around 65,000 beedi (cigarette) workers in Solapur prompted the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) to secure affordable and decent housing for them. Beginning with housing for the beedi workers – mainly women who were their families’ sole bread winners – the initiative has expanded to include textile workers and other unorganized sector workers.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The struggle began with workers in Solapur, under the leadership of CITU, demanding affordable housing from the government. When their demands were ignored, the workers mounted their struggle, forming cooperative housing societies and purchasing land on their own. Through mass mobilisations, protest actions and campaigns, they forced the central and state governments to allot funds for the construction of houses.
Three housing schemes have been formulated so far. The first, the Comrade Godutai Parulekar Housing Scheme, has been hailed as the biggest cooperative housing project for workers in Asia. The construction for this 10,000-house project started in 2001 and was completed in 2006. The women took part in designing the homes, and the whole project has been designed and built by a local construction firm.
The second scheme – the Comrade Meenakshitai Sane Housing Scheme – involved building 1,600 houses for women beedi workers and was inaugurated in 2015. The third scheme is by far the biggest, and aims to construct 30,000 affordable houses for beedi workers, textile workers and other unorganised sector workers. The central and state governments sanctioned the project in 2016, and it will include all basic infrastructure and amenities including schools, a college, hospital, market, places of worship, roads, water and electricity.
",
Maison d’Éducation à l’Alimentation Durable supplies the community with organic food and educates future generations,Center For Sustainable Food Education,"MOUANS-SARTOUX, FRANCE",,,FOOD ,2020,http://mouans-sartoux.net/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Maison d’Éducation à l’Alimentation Durable (MEAD, the Center for Sustainable Food Education) is a holistic municipal initiative in Mouans-Sartoux, France, that is enabling the town to transition to consuming organic and sustainably produced food. Since its launch, MEAD has prioritised the health of its children, families, older people, local companies, students, researchers and public authorities – and the needs of sustainable agriculture – through progressive food policy.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Since 2012, the town’s school canteens have been serving 100% organic food, with 96% of the vegetables produced in Mouans-Sartoux itself (organic food limits the residue of pesticides and endocrine disrupters, etc. in adults’ and children’s food). The town has also reduced the food loss and waste in school canteens by 80%, and includes two vegetarian meals in their weekly menu. Mouans-Sartoux was an early adopter of the idea of diversifying proteins in people’s diet, and has driven a threefold increase in the provision of agricultural land for sustainable farming in the area.
We run workshops and classes for children on sustainable food, and 51 families were or are being supported through a targeted six-month programme to shift towards more sustainable food habits. In addition, we’re supporting 100 families through a social grocery store, have engaged 21 companies on their use of sustainable food, and have also reached several thousand people through our festivals and events organised by the Town Hall. In a survey carried out in 2019, 87% of parents reported to us that they had changed their habits to eat more sustainable local, organic healthy food.
Our team of six to eight people is led by a steering committee, comprising elected officials, scientists, institutions and local people. They meet twice yearly to evaluate existing actions and propose new ideas. There is also a local group made up of local stakeholders and residents that meets regularly to make new proposals and strengthen our project. Our success story has generated much interest in France and abroad.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
Following the COVID-19 outbreak we had to cancel many of our planned events. However, the municipal farm continued to produce vegetables, some of which were used for the few meals served in the school canteen for the children of health workers and municipal employees who continued to work during the crisis. The surplus was frozen on site and food was donated to the nearest hospital and the town’s social grocery store. The MEAD regularly posted ideas for recipes and gardening activities on its Facebook page to help parents occupy their children during lockdown. Despite the challenges posed by the crisis, it can be seen as an opportunity to increase awareness about food resilience among local people and also at a wider scale.",
Observatorio del Agua de Terrassa ensures a democratic governance of water,Observatorio del Agua de Terrassa,"TERRASSA, SPAIN",,,WATER,2020,https://www.oat.cat/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Since 1842 the water supply in Terrassa – one of the largest cities in Catalonia – was managed by a private company. The clear need for a modern service with water as a common good resulted in the creation of the Terrassa Water Observatory (OAT) and the subsequent transformation in the city’s relationship with water.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
OAT’s goal is to re-municipalize in order to manage water as a common good, and to strengthen Terrassa’s citizens’ right to water and sanitation, and to a healthy environment. As part of the city council, OAT works to enable citizens to be part of decision-making in relation to water issues. Although its resources come from the town council, OAT is committed to the social solidarity economy; it works with the University of Catalonia (UPC) in Terrassa on aspects related to water quality.
OAT has promoted the Social Pact for Public Water in the city, and urged political parties standing for election to sign it and ratify it publicly. It has drawn up a Charter for Water in the City, inspired by the experience of Berlin, and promoted open debate on water management to the entire city. The observatory meets with all water stakeholders in the city, including all political parties. Work takes place at the city level through coordination with actors promoting the new water culture to bring water closer to the city as a whole.",
EnergÉtica Cooperative challenges energy poverty by supplying clean energy,Cooperativa EnergÉtica,"VALLADOLID, SPAIN",,,ENERGY,2020,https://www.energetica.coop/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Valladolid’s Energética Cooperative grew as a response to the 2008 financial crisis when, in protest against energy poverty and the failure of central government to plan for a clean energy transition, local citizens demanded sustainable energy solutions. Today, Energética Cooperative has signed agreements with ten regional municipalities and supplies energy to each of them.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Today, Energética has 2,200 electricity retail contracts (30% of which are in the city of Valladolid, representing 89% of households) and services 11% of the city’s industrial and service users. All of our energy comes from renewable sources: a small portion is produced at our Valteína mini-hydro power plant, and the rest is acquired from the national electricity market, but only from renewable producers (guaranteed through renewable origin certificates from those producers).
In 2017 (our first year of productive activity), our turnover was €12,000, while the projected turnover for 2020 is €205,000k (although this figure will inevitably be affected by the COVID-19 crisis). This gives an indication of the cooperative’s steady growth. Despite state-level (conservative) opposition and traditional energy companies discrediting our efforts, we have successfully promoted citizen participation and empowerment and have managed to incorporate the principles and values of a new energy model into the agenda of many local organisations in Valladolid, including the University of Valladolid, labour unions, political parties, NGOs, and other municipalities.
We are at the heart of an ecological transformation, and we stress the need to reduce overall energy consumption and improve energy efficiency as much as possible. Our campaign to promote solar energy to households has been backed by the Valladolid municipality. A system we have created to provide electricity from batteries and solar PV that can be transported by bike is regularly lent to social organisations to replace diesel generators at many public events – reducing pollution, greenhouse gases and noise.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
The COVID-19 outbreak affected our work significantly given that visits to customers are a regular activity of our staff, who need to check on the viability of installing self-consumption solar PV, or of retrofitting a building. Our work plan had therefore to be redesigned to give more weight to tasks that are achievable when working from home, such as improving online communication, for example recording original videos in a light-hearted tone to increase social awareness about energy issues, and recording video tutorials so those installing self-consumption PV can maintain their systems autonomously.",
The Cloughjordan Ecovillage models the transition to a low-carbon society,Sustainable Projects Ireland CLG (SPI),"CLOUGHJORDAN, TIPPERARY, IRELAND",,,HOUSING,"2020, 2019",http://www.thevillage.ie/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Cloughjordan Ecovillage models the transition to a low-carbon society and shares its learning through various educational activities. With 55 low-carbon homes, a carbon-neutral district heating system, a community farm, green enterprise centre, a planned reed-bed treatment plant and Ireland’s lowest ecological footprint, the ecovillage is demonstrating different ways to achieve ecological, economic and social sustainability.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The Cloughjordan Ecovillage emerged 20 years ago thanks to a group of pioneers concerned at the lack of public awareness of climate change and the need to build sustainability. Two decades on, Cloughjordan Ecovillage is now widely recognised as a unique community that illustrates the potential to live a low-carbon lifestyle while developing livelihoods.
In 2019, more than 1600 people attended the educational tours and courses that the ecovillage offers as a way to provide knowledge and inspiration to the broader community. This is in addition to hundreds of people who came to a range of festivals such as the August permaculture festival and the September apple festival. Universities in Ireland and in the US regularly bring students on study visits as part of their academic courses, allowing for immersive learning experiences. The ecovillage is also a place where students and academics from Ireland and overseas undertake research on aspects of low-carbon living.
Through our membership-based community farm, which feeds over 100 people with deliveries twice weekly throughout the year, and knock-on projects like the Middle Country Café on the main street using produce from the farm, or the Cloughjordan Community Amphitheatre providing a venue for festivals, concerts and plays, the village demonstrates the viability of local production, exchange and consumption.
A vibrant cluster of businesses includes a 34-bed eco-hostel and RiotRye, a national award-winning wood-fired bakery and bakery Schoolthe, and on main street, a book and coffee shop. Knowing the urgency of the climate crisis, we seek new ways to share the lessons of building a resilient community, combining ecological with economic sustainability.
COVID-19 ADAPTATION:
The Covid-19 pandemic closed down our educational work and temporarily suspended our guided tours and courses. In response, we produced an online virtual tour, moved community meetings to Zoom, and continued to work in a socially distanced way on our farm. The pandemic has motivated us to develop new ways of offering our educational programme through developing a series of ‘Deep Listening’ webinars. We are also filming a short promotional video promoting tailored webinars for university and school groups. In these ways, the ecovillage is drawing a wider participation in its educational activities.",
"The Jackson Just Transition Plan is transforming Jackson into a city of equity, solidarity and mutual aid",Cooperation Jackson,"JACKSON, MS, UNITED STATES",,,FOOD ,2020,https://cooperationjackson.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
The Jackson Just Transition Plan aims to transform Jackson, Mississippi, into an ecologically and economically regenerative city, rooted in equity, solidarity and mutual aid, where everyone’s fundamental human rights are fulfilled. Through creating people’s assemblies, developing an independent electoral force, and building the social and solidarity economy, the initiative successfully supported the election of progressive Mayors in 2013 and 2017.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Our work has kickstarted a growing network of cooperatives and solidarity economy organizations. Two of our key coalition activities include the Union-Coop Initiative (to build broad unity amongst working class people in Jackson), and the Coalition for Economic Justice (to monitor, challenge and propose primarily state-level legislation).
We are currently trying to change state laws on cooperatives and workers’ rights in Mississippi, and laws that limit cooperatives to agricultural businesses, utilities, or credit unions. We are also engaged in a long-term campaign to strengthen working class organizations in the state. Finally, we are working hard to advance what we call “Just Transition Policies” in Jackson and to push the state to adopt a suite of laws that will combat climate change.
We design everything we possibly can to reduce carbon emissions, overproduction, and overconsumption; do our best to recycle materials, e.g. recycling wood and bricks in our housing rehabilitation efforts in our community land trust. On top of this, we try to source and purchase our goods as close to Jackson as possible.
All of these initiatives have helped provide quality employment and wages to a growing number of Jacksonians, and initiated a process to decommodify land. We’ve started the process of creating permanently affordable housing and are building a broad consensus on the need for food sovereignty. We’ve also laid the foundation for the development for a human rights charter and commission to respect, protect, and fulfill the basic human rights of all Jacksonians.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
Our economic activities have been greatly curtailed by COVID-19. We shut down all of our operations in March, except for Freedom Farms, because food production is critical during a crisis and because we could do it with proper physical distancing. However, we have significantly regrouped in new ways since April, especially through the production of personal protective equipment (PPE). Our Community Production Cooperative (CPC) perfected the art producing two types of masks, 1) a cloth mask, for mass distribution and 2) a 3D print mask, for frontline workers. We have given away well over 1000 cloth masks and over 200 3D print masks to doctors, nurses, dentists, and frontline factory and retail clerk workers. In the process, we tripled the productive capacity of the CPC and will start producing masks for commercial sale in August 2020, providing an additional four jobs in our community. This further proves the utility and transformative capacities of this type of production.",
"Eau de Paris delivers cheaper, cleaner water",Eau de Paris,"PARIS, FRANCE",,,WATER ,"2020, 2019",http://www.eaudeparis.fr/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
For a decade, Eau de Paris (EDP) has been improving Paris’ municipal water supply – a service that used to be fragmented and expensive. Supported by strong political will, the city of Paris has made water management a major democratic issue, ensuring better managed, high-quality and more affordable water supply, backed by a strong environmental strategy addressing the water sector’s economic, civic, social and environmental responsibilities.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Eau de Paris today provides a successful model for how to run modern metropolitan water services. As a commercial, publicly owned body, we provide drinking water to 3 million users per year, and our water is still cheaper for users than it was before re-municipalisation in 2010. Our users report 90% satisfaction with our service, and for the seventh year in a row (2018) we’ve been given France’s Customer Service of the Year award.
Our status as a public company, backed by high-performance infrastructure, enables us to guarantee the lowest water price in the region (about €1 per cubic metre for the drinking-water portion of the bill) while re-investing all of our profits into our maintenance and modernisation programmes.
Never before has the issue of water in the city been more talked about, from public fountains and swimming in the Seine, to water as a means to generate green energy or help homeless people or refugees in some of the city’s reception centres. Today, despite a context of a COVID-19-related decline in water consumption and rising costs (which are putting the whole sector under strain), Eau de Paris is in good economic and financial health. Our business model is particularly resilient and represents a strong example of effective, inclusive and sustainable public management.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
At the start of the pandemic, the bottled water industry immediately lobbied for people to use its products, so we re-ran our zero-waste campaign and reiterated our key messages: tap water is safe; drink public water; don’t create more plastic waste. None of our workers had to take a reduction in their paid working hours during the crisis, and we strengthened our contributions to help those struggling to pay their water bills. Our laboratory, which looks at water-borne viruses, worked with Paris University and other public research institutions to track the presence of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in urban waters (most importantly in used water). For the common good, our work to prove that analysing water is an efficient way to track the course of the pandemic has been made public. Covid-19 has meant a significant decrease in Paris’ water consumption and we will lose at least €12 million this year – a loss that in the short term is not an issue because our current financial situation is robust.",
PENGON empowers Palestinian women as sustainable energy leaders,PENGON-FOE Palestine,"WEST BANK & GAZA, PALESTINE",,,ENERGY ,"2020, 2019",https://www.pengon.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Energy scarcity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip impacts women in different ways to men, yet women are very rarely consulted on energy solutions. PENGON’s ‘Empowering Women as Sustainable Energy Leaders’ initiative brings local women together to transform the energy system in Palestine, putting solar energy in their hands. It also empowers women to be active in decision-making around energy and to lead change in their communities.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
PENGON organised women-only discussion spaces throughout 2018 to 2020, which enabled women to participate freely in discussions on energy issues. Community workshops were held to discuss the importance of women’s participation, and strengthen social acceptance of the project. In the Gaza Strip, our work helps women build their skills at community and organisational level, and to become active in lobbying and advocacy spaces for influencing energy policies, thereby benefitting more than 800,000 citizens.
Through our initiatives, which target low-income families and small businesses, electricity bills have hit zero thanks to the use of clean energy sources. We have provided technical capacity-building to train women to operate and maintain clean-energy technology, such as solar powered devices and water pumps in households, farms and training centres. This is alongside building women’s skills to run lobbying and advocacy campaigns to influence national clean energy polices.
Many of our activities were designed to target the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Ministry of Energy and Natural resources, as governmental ministries are considered a key stakeholder of the project. One example is training ministries in how to apply gender mainstreaming in their work. As a result, in 2020 the Ministry of Women’s Affairs took an active part in building the capacity of the gender unit in the Energy Authority, and ensuring that the national clean energy strategy is sensitive to women’s needs.
PENGON and our members have brought people-powered electricity to more than 270 households in the Gaza Strip. In the past, these communities struggled to access enough energy to meet their needs, and the limited amount they were getting came from dirty energy sources in Israel, such as coal. PENGON is also moving towards changing the law to protect the environment by increasing the share of Palestinian energy that comes from clean energy sources.
COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT
All Palestinian cities were placed under lockdown for three months from the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, resulting in delays to the implementation of solar energy projects. However, we started working again in these cities with some protective measures directly after the government opened them up. While the spread of COVID-19 has slowed progress in our lobbying work, one positive outcome is that when many activities moved online this enabled more stakeholders to be involved.",
Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative,Common Wise Education Inc. / Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative,"NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES",,,HOUSING ,2019,https://bcdi.nyc/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative (BCDI) is a community-led effort to build an equitable, sustainable and democratic local economy that creates wealth and ownership for low-income people of colour. One of the primary ways it does this is by building a network of local leaders committed economic democracy, and helping them shift their organisations and institutions to take forward-looking, coordinated action to build shared wealth.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
BCDI’s Planning and Policy Lab supports long-standing community-based organisations to develop community-driven solutions with additional research, enhanced analytical tools and strategy support. The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative began when local grassroots organisations realised they needed to ensure that their communities, particularly working class people of colour who make up the majority of the Bronx’s 1.5 million residents, would be the primary decision-makers when it came to planning and economic development. They were galvanised by injustices such as the City’s disregard for a community-led plan to redevelop a vacant armory into much-needed schools, and its proposal instead for a shopping mall that would create low-quality jobs and threaten locally-owned businesses.
Over the past three years BCDI has trained over 250 Bronx residents – most of whom have been leaders or staff of community-based organisations – in principles of economic democracy and systems of cooperative ownership. In part due to these trainings, several of these organizations have shifted their work to support economic democracy. One has made it an explicit goal and is supporting the creation of a community land trust. Another, whose work has long centred on environmental justice and resiliency, is now advocating for community ownership of resilience infrastructure.
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Cargonomia Community Cargobike and Local Food Distribution Center,Cargonomia,"BUDAPEST, HUNGARY",,,FOOD ,"2019, 2018",https://cargonomia.hu/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Since 2015, Budapest-based Cargonomia has acted as a sustainable urban transport centre and local organic food distribution point through its cargo-bike messenger service, bicycle-building cooperative, family-scale organic vegetable farm, organic bakery, wine distributor and network of citizen volunteers.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The cooperative assists in supplying more than 3,000 organic food boxes per year, with messengers cycling nearly 18,000 km while servicing a 27 km2 section of the city annually. This directly reduces the environmental impact of food production and distribution that at a global level accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and an alarming amount of food waste.
Cargonomia operates from a hub that serves as the messenger dispatch centre; food box pickup point; do-it-yourself repair workshop for bicycles, clothing and electronics; and logistics centre for sustainable urban transport solutions where community members can borrow locally manufactured cargo-bikes.
Cargonomia aims to contribute to youth education by reinforcing the importance of hands on education in the fields of organic gardening and bicycle competency, and promotes its potential by organizing workshops with volunteer instructors. Cargonomia provides support to the budding urban gardening and agroforesty movement in Budapest by hosting events in partner garden locations and through the establishment of their first agroforestry test site in 2018 in Budapest.
In 2018 they formally launched a community cargobike sharing network with their own resources. At the moment 11 cargobicycles, trailers, dog and child carriers are available to borrow ,hosted at 4 locations in the city. They have also launched an urban edible agroforestry project in cooperation with the Zuglo municipality in the city, where they have begun planting edible fruit trees, berries, aromatics and bee friendly flowers in a formerly abandoned illegal parking site in the district.
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Barcelona en Comú,Barcelona en Comú,"BARCELONA, SPAIN",,,HOUSING ,2018,https://barcelonaencomu.cat/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
In June 2014, activists in Barcelona formed a citizen’s platform to stand for election and “win back” the city from its centre-right city council, which the movement saw as having sold out the city to business interests. With little money or experience, the movement ousted the conservative political establishment, and is starting to bring change using a dynamic model of citizen engagement.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
In 2014, citizens aiming to “win back” Barcelona from its long-standing, right-wing council formed a movement to stand for election, backed by a collaboratively produced manifesto centered on four fundamental rights: to guarantee basic rights and a decent life for all citizens; boost the economy based on social and environmental justice; democratize institutions; and assume an ethical commitment to its citizens.
It also proposed eradicating economic speculation, improving access to decent housing, and reducing dependence on tourism. All this was underpinned by an ethical commitment to citizens, and a policy of no debts to financial institutions.
In September 2014, 30,000 people signed and validated the manifesto. Candidates were selected to represent Barcelona en Comú in the elections, and a crowdfunding project was launched to fund the campaign. Barcelona en Comú won the city elections.
Barcelona en Comú’s remunicipalization plans for its water supplies have been strongly attacked by right-wing neoliberal parties, but the movement’s coalition-building with water activists and other cities (that successfully remunicipalized the water supply service) has helped withstand this.
In stark contrast to water, there has been no political opposition to the movement’s energy proposals, and a municipal electricity company is set to be launched to start generating electricity for self consumption and to be sold to an increasing number of citizens. The municipality wants to achieve energy self-sufficiency by installing solar panels on the roofs of publicly-owned buildings, such as libraries, markets and civic centres.
And on housing too, victories have been won: a limit on the number of licences for tourist apartments; fines for owners of multiple properties who leave them empty; reform of municipal buildings in the city centre to create public housing, and authorization for municipal land in the city centre to be used by housing cooperatives.",
Earthworker Cooperative,Friends of the Earth Australia / Earthworker Cooperative,"MELBOURNE, MORWELL, AUSTRALIA",,,ENERGY ,2019,https://earthworkercooperative.com.au/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
For 22 years Earthworker Cooperative has brought the environment/climate movement together with the labour movement to build cooperative manufactories and other cooperatives to enable communities to find ways out of the climate emergency. Today it is supporting a growing network of cooperatives in manufacturing, energy, and service sectors, including the award-winning Redgum Cleaning Cooperative.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The Earthworker project was set up by tra­des unionists who were also environmentalists, and who realised they could use their social weight to help the state of Victoria undertake a ‘just transition’ to a low-carbon economy, and empower fossil-fuel dependent regions like the Latrobe Valley community through dignified, democratic employment and socially and environmentally useful enterprise. Earthworker’s flagship initiative is the Earthworker Energy Manufacturing Cooperative, a worker-run factory producing premium quality solar hot water and energy storage products for Australian households and businesses in Victoria’s coal region in Morwell.
Return to Morwell Factory Open, Bulk Buy Kicks off! Photo credit: Earthworker Cooperative
The cooperative sells its products to customers, governments and through union Enterprise Bargaining Agreements. The Maritime Union of Australia is the first major union to place the Earthworker Clause into their Agreements. This means that waterfront workers will be able to obtain local cooperative-manufactured products, as part of their negotiated wage rise, which means they create climate jobs and reduce their energy bills.
Earthworker is focused on social and environmentally just outcomes and have already placed solar hot water systems into low -income housing and importantly, we are engaged in the act of practical Treaty building with first nations peoples which involves installing hot water systems in Indigenous Housing.
Rooted in strategies to demonstrate ways in which we can work our way out of climate emergency, Earthworker has worked to promote cooperatives and mutuals through unions, public social partnerships to achieve the big infrastructure projects our country and the world needs, and to link such activities globally through Social Sector Fair Trade Agreements (SSFTAs) with labour, cooperative, environment/climate movements, Superannuation/Pension Funds, national and regional Governments, Faith Communities and others to build the critical mass of action on the climate emergency. We are advocating around our work, trying to maximise the profile of the work we do and build the boarder social and solidarity sector of the economy.
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Citizen's Initiative Referendum against forced demolitions of social housing,Atelier Popular d'Urbanisme,"GRENOBLE, FRANCE",,,HOUSING ,2020,http://www.assoplanning.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
In 2019, over 500 residents in a social housing development in La Villeneuve, Grenoble, France held a citizens’ referendum to protest against the planned demolition of their homes. While the result of the referendum was not accepted by the city mayor, the campaign drew significant public attention to the issue of social housing demolitions and the lack of democracy in urban planning. It has also highlighted how referenda can be used to collectively press for social housing to be rehabilitated rather than destroyed and rebuilt elsewhere, at greater environmental and social cost.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
Our campaign grew out of the action of municipal groups and progressive urban planners, architects and landscapers during the 1970s. Our activities helped elect a new municipal coalition in 2014, but the decision to demolish the social housing development remained.
After we had exhausted all means to reverse the decision – including demonstrations, and a 2000-strong petition – we organised a local referendum (officially permitted under a municipal law of February 2014), and held debates, door-to-door campaigning, and a vote conducted on the premises of the social housing itself.
We held an intensive poster campaign in the neighbourhood in the months leading up to the referendum, shared our story on social networks and invited the press not only to report on the referendum but also to observe the voting process. This strategy resulted in the initiative being covered in multiple articles in the local and national press. We also called on experts and academics specialised in local democracy to strengthen the impact of our initiative with public authorities.
Our protest against social housing demolition is part of the fight to ensure that urban planning results in cities that enhance the local ecology and the right to the city. Our experience shows the importance of creating concrete mechanisms – such as citizen referenda – for the implementation of the principles of the right to the city, as it is not only a question of proclaiming rights but also of finding the means to implement them.
The campaign has aroused the interest of organisations elsewhere that may be able to draw inspiration from it, and consider setting up their own direct democracy mechanisms to protest against projects that, for example, do not respect the environment. So, while the results are relatively disappointing in the short term in Grenoble, it is likely that this initiative will lead to significant advances for direct democracy in the future.
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Citizen participation and solidarity tariffs in remunicipalized water utility,Grenoble Une Ville pour Tous – RCGE,"GRENOBLE, FRANCE",,,WATER ,2018,http://unevillepourtous.fr/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
In 1983, a right-wing mayor was elected in Grenoble. His administration was marked by corruption and the power he gave to large corporations in the management of public services. Elected officials and environmental activists mobilised in the 1980s and 1990s to prove that corruption was involved in many deals, and set up an alternative, municipal entity to take back and run the water utility.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
The decision to remunicipalise the water system due to corruption, lack of transparency and abusive tariffs was taken in March 2000 and implemented in 2001, with the immediate cancellation of the contract with private company Suez.
Under municipal water company Régie des Eaux de Grenoble (REG) investment in infrastructure increased threefold, while maintaining the price of water at lower and steadier levels. The new public enterprise adopted an advanced form of public participation in decision-making by establishing a water users’ committee. One third of the members of the REG’s board of directors are now civil society representatives and the other two thirds are municipal councillors.
A few years after Grenoble’s experience, the City of Paris decided to remunicipalise its water service. Between 2000 and 2008, this allowed users to save €20 million, mainly through improved maintenance resulting in more efficient water use. The city then launched a social water tariff policy: households for whom the cost of the service exceeds 2.5% of their annual income are reimbursed part of the amount by the CAF. In parallel to the social strategy, the goal is to maintain a pure and untreated water supply – the only case in France.",
Dispossessed community finances and builds affordable homes,Centre for Community Initiatives,"DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA",,,HOUSING,2018,http://www.ccitanzania.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
When the homes of 36,000 people were demolished to expand Tanzania’s Dar Es Salaam port, Chamazi Community Based Housing Scheme galvanized displaced communities, civil society, government, donors and the private sector to build new and affordable homes for them.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
In 2006, Tanzania’s government demolished 7,351 houses in Kurasini to expand Dar Es Salaam port, leaving about 36,000 people homeless. In response, the community swung into action, securing 30 acres of land for resettlement and collecting about 24 million Tanzanian shillings (US$ 24,000) from 300 of its members to buy the land.
Trained Federation women doing construction work
The project also improved access to water and sanitation – as well as a borehole and solar powered water pump, sewage is now treated using a constructed wetland with recyclable water technology. A major win for the project was that it identified potential financial sources for the urban poor, who often cannot access finance from formal institutions.
All of this was achieved through the setting up of the Chamazi Community Based Housing Scheme known as Muungano Housing Cooperatives, and the Tanzanian Urban Poor Fund. Together they raised a US$ 100,000 loan from Slum Dwellers International (SDI), US$ 40,000 from UK-based organization Homeless International (Reall) for water and sanitation and the solar pump for the community borehole from Temeke Municipal Council.
Street-scene
CCI trained the community in construction skills, enabling construction materials to be fabricated on-site by community members, who also helped build the houses. Other partners contributed expertise and professional advice on surveying and acquiring land, developing building plans and designing the houses. To date, 75 new homes have been provided.
House-owner Rose Liheta seated in front of her house talking to her Neighbor.",
Refusing to Give Up: Civil Society’s Movement against Water Privatization in Jakarta,"Amrta Institute, the Coalition of Jakarta Residents Opposing Water Privatization","JAKARTA, INDONESIA",,,WATER ,"2019, 2018",http://amrta-institute.org,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Jakarta citizens’ work to end privatization in Jakarta and enable a transition to good, publicly-run water services has resulted in the city government’s plan to re-municipalize Jakarta’s water supply.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
For some years Jakarta’s governors have been supportive of ending water privatization in the city, despite this trend being backed by national government and the Supreme Court. The city’s population has for many years combated water privatization on many fronts, with the support of experts, academics, human rights and anti-corruption activists, and lawyers. Targeted actions have ranged from op-ed articles in newspapers, investigative reports in television and radio, research studies and leaflets, to strikes, demonstrations, debates, media campaigns, rallies, petitions and legal actions.
Photo credit: Amrta Institute for Water Literacy
One particularly effective strategy in November 2012 involved residents, represented by Jakarta Legal Aid, filing a citizen lawsuit against water privatization – a long and successful legal challenge that played a major role in maintaining political pressure.
The governor of Jakarta responded to the pressure by forming a special team named The Water Management Evaluation team, consisting of civil servants, experts, and Amrta Institute Director Nila Ardhianie. The team recommended that the Governor end water privatization using a civil settlement and set out a plan to take over water services from the private sector. Public water company PAM Jaya demanded a contract renegotiation with the private water operators, and the provincial government of Jakarta announced a plan to purchase private water operators’ shares. In 2013, the provincial house of representatives approved a budget for PAM Jaya to proceed with share repurchase.
In February 2019, Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan announced that the provincial government would take over the wholesale management of water supplies in the city from private operators – a decision taken despite a Supreme Court ruling that supported the legality of water privatization in Jakarta.",
"Transforming a century-old, oil company town",Richmond Progressive Alliance,"RICHMOND, CA, UNITED STATES",,,ENERGY ,2018,https://www.richmondprogressivealliance.net/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
The Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) has made Richmond, California, a national model after successfully organizing the community to challenge pollution by the town’s oil giant, Chevron, high rents, gun crime, gang violence and voter apathy.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
From 2006 to 2014, under Green mayor, Gayle McLaughlin – an RPA founder – the city tackled environmental hazards arising from oil, extracting higher taxes from Chevron and suing the company for damage caused by a major refinery fire in 2012. A community mobilization led by environmental justice groups and the RPA helped Richmond win $90 million in financial concessions from Chevron in return for approving a refinery modernization project to improve safety and reduce pollution.
Richmond has also raised its local minimum wage and, by appointing a visionary gay police chief, greatly reduced local crime rates, including homicides, through successful community policing. In 2016, new rent control measures were brought in, which protect about 40% of all Richmond tenants.
The hybrid RPA has been central to all this. As a membership organization, a coalition of community groups, and a key coordinator of grassroots education and citizen mobilization, it works on issues such as labour, immigrant rights, environmental justice, rent, police accountability, fair taxation of business, community health and environmental protection.
Thanks to their year-round, non-electoral organizing work, RPA candidates now have a progressive “super-majority”. Voter alienation and estrangement from local politics has been greatly reduced and residents surveyed believe that the city has improved on all fronts. Richmond’s exemplary mix of electoral campaigning around issues and candidates, principled and persistent follow-up by elected officials, and some skilled professional city managing have made it a model for municipal action on behalf of people poorly served by local government in the past.
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People power drives social and ecological transition,Cooperation Jackson,"JACKSON, MS, UNITED STATES",,,HOUSING ,"2019, 2018",https://cooperationjackson.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
Most people in Jackson, Mississippi live at or below the poverty line, and face chronic unemployment, poor health and an extreme wealth gap between black and white. Cooperation Jackson is helping transform the city into one that is ecologically and economically regenerative, rooted in equity, solidarity and mutual aid.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
To date the project has provided quality employment and wages to a growing number of Jacksonians, initiated a process to decommodify land, and embarked on the creation of permanently affordable housing. It has also built a broad consensus on the need for food sovereignty and laid the foundation for the development for a human rights charter and commission to respect, protect, and fulfill the basic human rights of all Jacksonians.
Launched in May 2014, Cooperation Jackson has supported several progressive candidates to get elected to municipal offices; started a growing network of cooperatives; created the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust; and set up the Human Rights Institute – initiatives that are delivering quality employment, affordable housing and food sovereignty in a way that respects, protects, and fulfills the basic human rights of all Jacksonians.
Underpinned by the Jackson-Kush Plan which involves building people power through people’s assemblies, developing an independent electoral force, and building a social and solidarity economy, the project’s ultimate goal includes making Jackson a zero-waste and emissions city capable of providing a range of local goods and services via community production.
From community energy centres to the creation of three eco-villages, within the next five years the project will retrofit 100 homes (making them completely off-grid) and build the capacity to produce 10% of Jackson’s vegetables on urban, solar-powered farms.
Cooperation Jackson is also working to combat climate change, the system of excessive resource extraction, and to change various laws in the state of Mississippi that limit cooperatives to agricultural businesses, utilities, or credit unions, and is engaged in a long-term campaign to strengthen working class organisations in the state.",
Power Shift supports farmers with clean energy,People’s Cooperative Renewable Energy Society Ltd,"PORT LOUIS, MAURITIUS",,,ENERGY ,2018,http://www.klrmoris.org/,"WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE?
The Power Shift Campaign is challenging Mauritius’ privately owned, non-renewable energy sector with a solar-powered, cooperative alternative, through which struggling farmers can improve local food production. Their actions have thwarted plans for a new coal plant, improved government transparency, and acquired land to produce solar power when they get the go-ahead.
MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS
When Mauritius’ government secretly licenced Malaysian multinational CT Power to open a new coal power plant in 2013, social organisations took action, getting the plans shelved and all secret documents regarding negotiations with private sector energy companies released. Not only this, the movement pushed the government to create a National Energy Audit Commission to review Mauritius’ energy policies, and to set much higher renewable energy goals.
Realising that strong alternatives to non-renewable energy needed to be put forward, the committee set up the Renewable Energy Collective (KLR) and, together with the Centre for Alternative Research and Studies (CARES), launched the Power Shift campaign. This in turn led to the establishment of the People’s Cooperative Renewable Energy Coalition.
Supported by youth, trade unions, social movements, the progressive political party and the island’s sugar planters, the People’s Cooperative formed a plan to tackle the country’s energy and food supply problems in one stroke – by placing solar panels on the land of unemployed sugar planters to generate renewable energy to help produce food in nearby greenhouses.
Agreements have been set up with local sugar planters who have lost their jobs to use their land for solar power when the (KLR) gets a licence. The People’s Cooperative bid to enter the energy market has been stalled by the obstruction of multinationals and oligarchs, as well as government unwillingness to permit solar energy production, yet signifiant wins have been made.",
1 Title Organisation Location Location - geographic Category Year Website Text Population size
2 Keep water in public hands! African Center for Advocacy (ACA) YAOUNDE, CAMEROON WATER 2021–2022 http://www.we-advocate.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Ten years of water privatization have affected about 43% of the Cameroonian population, with women and children bearing the brunt. In 2019, African Center for Advocacy (ACA) launched the «Keep Water in Public Hands» campaign with a coalition of civil society, media, unions and grassroots organisations to stop the corporate agenda of forcing the government to privatize water. This movement has contributed to stopping water privatization and to advancing the human right to water in Cameroon. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The conditions that prompted Cameroon to privatise the public water service in 2008 are once again multiplying on the ground. Between untimely water cuts, deterioration of installations and bad management practices, the public company (Camwater) which produces and distributes drinking water, is struggling to provide it in quantity and quality to an ever-growing population. Back then, privatization was supposed to deliver improved infrastructure and lower prices — but neither materialized. Though the water was renationalized in 2018, numerous shortcomings continue to hamper the provision of clean water to the population. In 2022, Camwater confessed its role in the drinking water crisis. According to the company, the episodic shortages observed in the capital are mainly linked to the numerous malfunctions of the Akomnyada water collection and treatment station, located 35 km east of the city. According to official figures, the demand for drinking water in Yaoundé and Mbalmayo, two towns supplied by the Akomnyada catchment station, is currently around 300,000 m3 per day. Faced with the state’s “inability” to effectively provide public water service, the African Center for Advocacy (ACA) has increased lobbying, media advocacy as well as labour engagements to push for reduced taxes for any household that consumes less than 20 cubic meters of water per month. ACA has enjoined the national water distribution company to establish water pricing by categorizing the price per cubic meter of water by the type of customer. This greatly increased the number of low-income households connected to the water system. They are also monitoring privatization threats and pressing the government to invest on rehabilitation projects and taking responsibility. The ACA will not give up its fight as long as the cloud of privatisation hangs over the water sector in Cameroon. Their goal is the recognition of the right to water in the Cameroonian constitution.
3 Valencia walks towards the future: the cycling revolution in Valencia Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PMUS) VALENCIA, SPAIN ENERGY 2021–2022 https://www.valencia.es/val/inici WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? For decades, Valencia was a city that revered motor vehicles and boasted about the quantity and fluidity of its traffic. However, in the summer of 2015, the municipal authorities took a step towards reversing this situation. The climate emergency scenario demanded it, but also the desire to improve the quality of life of its inhabitants, who, with the promotion of cycling and the new pedestrianisation, save energy and improve their economy. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Valencia is a city where public space once again belongs to citizens, rather than cars, and people are no longer pedestrians. The sustainable mobility promoted by Valencia City Council has brought about ambitious and fundamental changes that generate individual and collective health. Apart from urban planning focused on responding to the climate emergency, it is necessary to change living habits, reduce travel and encourage local consumption. Certain stretches of Valencia’s cycle network of almost 170 kilometres see around 7,000 vehicles per day, and the use of this sustainable mode of transport has increased by 21% in the last year. According to calculations by the Department of Sustainable Mobility, each kilometre of cycle lane represents an energy saving of 0.214%. Since the approval in 2013 of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PMUS) until now, the cycling network in Valencia has grown by 44 kilometres – 36% – which, added to the nine kilometres planned for next year, will mean an energy saving of 11% by 2023. Although the city’s first cycle lane was built in 1982, the network has since undergone not only mileage extensions, but also improvements to the route, safety and parking facilities that have led to more and more people opting for this mode of transport: it is estimated that three out of every ten people cycling on the network in 2021 were previously commuting by private car. The criteria applied to determine the areas where cycle lanes are to be provided were the aforementioned SUMP, the result of the proposals made by the public in the participatory budgets and requests made by the council itself in the annual budgets. The majority of people who move around the city do so on foot (around 50%), by bicycle (6%) or by public transport (16%): only around 15% use private vehicles to move around the city.
4 Building the movement for agroecological urban gardening to ensure food sovereignty The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) PENANG, MALAYSIA FOOD 2021–2022 https://consumer.org.my/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? This agroecological urban farming movement is a positive vision based on the principles of simple, low-cost, traditional, healthy sustainable food that challenges the dominant narrative of the industrial food system. They demonstrate that you can grow your own food anywhere – small yard, balcony, or street corner. This project connects people to nature and each other, creating a movement of small farmers and urban dwellers who are together building a sustainable future and ensuring food sovereignty. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) has been championing and setting the standards behind the urban garden/farm concept for over a decade. Due to the hike in food prices, the nation’s lack of food security and serious concerns about higher oil prices and food shortages, the green wave in Penang seems to be picking up among the young and the old, especially among those living in the urban areas. The association began the Natural Farming Project twenty years ago, organising awareness programmes nationally to educate farmers about the dire consequences of using chemicals to grow food and to introduce alternative, natural farming techniques. Over the years, the project was extended to homes and schools to educate the larger community on the importance of growing their own food. When the Home Garden Project was launched, it attracted urbanites who were becoming more aware of environmental issues and concerned about eating chemical-laden food, opting to grow their own. For Penangites who live in high-rise buildings, CAP has been promoting vertical planting units too. They teach households to turn their kitchen waste into compost and growth promoters instead of discarding the waste, and they train people to make chemical-free compost and home-made fertilisers. In order to educate the young in schools and the older population through various associations, they provide the technical know-how to start a farm, edible gardens and herbal corners. Thanks to it, the Senior Citizens Association in Penang today have an eco-farm in their new premises, keeping members active and healthy, and the Green Squad from SMK Convent Butterworth school is getting students involved and winning awards such as the Green Flag awarded by WWF Malaysia. Another effort CAP has embarked on lately is to encourage farmers and the public in general to save their own seeds and share them with friends and neighbours. In this way, future seeds will become more adaptive and be able to sustain and grow in particular climatic and soil conditions, without relying on what big agri-businesses want to sell.
5 Rainwater harvesting in Mexico City’s marginalized neighborhoods Isla Urbana MEXICO CITY, MEXICO WATER 2021–2022 https://islaurbana.org/english/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? The expanding water crisis in Mexico and abroad calls for sustainable, effective, and innovative solutions that contribute to the creation of sustainable water management models. Isla Urbana firmly believes that rainwater harvesting, capacity building and water culture promotion, public policy development, and, above all, high quality work based on empathy, are key elements for a much-needed water paradigm shift. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Although rainwater harvesting systems are not new to Mexico, governments haven’t taken them seriously enough to invest in. However, Isla Urbana, an organization run by an interdisciplinary group of designers, urbanists, engineers, anthropologists, educators and artists, has partnered up with the local and regional governments to provide clean water through rainwater harvesting programs, and to ease the drought plaguing Mexico’s most vulnerable populations, particularly in the three most important cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey. For these solutions to succeed, subsidy programs have to be designed and implemented in collaboration with local and regional governments and/or private investors, and they must address the most vulnerable communities, priorly identified as the ones who would benefit the most from these technologies. The standard systems implemented in urban contexts, for example, are designed to fit in small spaces and have a storage of 2,500 liters (550 gallons), provide 3 and up to 9 months of water autonomy depending on the region, and the water can be used for all domestic purposes, even drinking. Since 2009, Isla Urbana has installed over 30,000 such systems around Mexico, impacting more than 200,000 people. The system’s effectiveness also relies on its users’ water habits, and particularly the level of adoption, achieved through education programs to utilize and maintain the technology, and to promote a responsible use of water. For that, the technology must be accompanied by capacity building, public policies, incentives and ongoing support. Isla Urbana does follow up visits to see if the technology is working and help people to develop a different relationship with water with, for example, lessons in schools about water culture for new generations of users, design of educational and didactic material, group and one-on-one training, and dissemination activities. By the end of the year 2023, they expect to have rainwater harvesting storage systems and filtering technology in and additional 12,000 households and 250 schools, impacting 65,000 people.
6 Entrepatios Madrid Entrepatios Las Carolinas cooperative MADRID, SPAIN HOUSING 2021–2022 WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Entrepatios is a neighbourhood community residing in a right-to-use cooperative housing building in Madrid since 2020. The high environmental standards of the building are combined with a democratic and collective organization that is sensitive to the differences among the inhabitants. Its intense community life is connected to the neighbourhood, trying to practise in the present what is desired for the cities of the future. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Entrepatios is the first ecological building with right of use in Spain that has been built between the centre of Madrid and the suburbs. It is a cohousing project, which means that it is the neighbours, members of the cooperative, who, through a participatory decision-making process, have decided on everything from the ecological materials to be used in the construction of the building to what part of the budget will be allocated to the insulation of the building and the type of air conditioning, among other things. Communal spaces make up 15% of the building: a communal courtyard; a room that serves as a children’s play area and as a space for weekly food distribution; a garage with mainly bicycles; a room dedicated to housing a large cistern where rainwater is collected, treated and used for toilets and gardening, by drip; a workshop room where neighbours work with their hands; a communal laundry; and a rooftop dedicated to adult leisure. The child population accounts for almost half of the total, some twenty children between the ages of two and twelve. The Entrepatios Las Carolinas cooperative is made up of the fifty-three people who live in its seventeen dwellings. Depending on the size of their dwelling, they have paid between 40,000 and 50,000 euros as a down payment, an amount that will be returned if they leave the cooperative and replaced by those who move in. The ownership of the building remains in the hands of the cooperative and its members use the homes, but never own them. The regime of cession of use is practically unknown in Spain and the lack of regulation makes the administrative process difficult. To date, there are forty other housing projects in the pipeline, including a second Entrepatios building. The residents are still working to define their own rules.
7 Social, cultural, and economic empowerment in Bukit Duri Urban Kampung reconstruction Ciliwung Merdeka JAKARTA, INDONESIA HOUSING 2021–2022 WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Kampung Susun Produktif Tumbuh is one of the symbols of community victory against forced eviction in Jakarta. The rebuilt Bukit Duri settlement stands for urban kampung life; that is, a socially, culturally, and economically tight-knit community in a spatial unit. In support of human agency in housing development, the design is purposely flexible to allow each family to expand when opportunities come. It also provides conduits for rainwater, reflecting the first-hand experience of Bukit Durit residents as a flood-resilient community. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS In 2016, seventy families were evicted from their homes in Bukit Duri, Jakarta, as part of efforts to mitigate the city’s persistent flooding problems. The eviction, however, was later ruled to be illegal. In 2017, the State Administrative Court found that the eviction had no legal basis and that the residents were entitled to compensation. A group of volunteers belonging to the organization Ciliwung Merdeka worked with the residents, from children to adults, to empower the community through several programmes to foster solidarity and independence. These included an education programme for children, public health education, waste handling and management, economic empowerment, art and culture education, disaster response and mitigation, spatial planning and architecture. In addition, together they lobbied the government demanding that poor citizens deserved proper living conditions and showing them that there was indeed an alternative to eviction. This alternative was then materialized in the Kampung Susun new residence and cooperative, where the residents themselves take responsibility for the care of the whole neighborhood. Residents do not pay rent, they are only obligated to pay a maintenance fee to the cooperative, which can also lend the residents business capital. Kampung Susun Cakung will be one of the first public housing projects in Jakarta to have a modern design tailored to the residents’ needs: a proper place for families to live, grow businesses and build a community, where they can interact with and help each other. Each unit is about 36 squares meter and consists of both a personal and productive space. The productive space provides a place for residents to manage and grow their business. This is a significant feature and the result of the participatory process.
8 100% renewable energy for Gaza Friends of the Earth Palestine GAZA, PALESTINE ENERGY 2021–2022 http://www.pengon.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Clean Energy Initiative in Gaza strip aims to find effective solutions for energy scarcity in Gaza, bringing light and hope for Gazan people. The Clean Energy Initiative eliminates darkness in Gaza by bringing clean energy into community hands, with a special focus on empowering women as Sustainable Energy Leaders. The initiative brings women together to transform the energy system in Palestine and to lead the decision-making processes in the clean energy sector. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The goal of Friends of the Earth Palestine (PENGON) in Gaza is to provide renewable energy to the Palestinian population, who live under darkness as a result of the Israeli blockade for sixteen years. PENGON works together with its member organizations to install solar panels as a solution. The organisation targets 900 families, six schools with 6000 students, twenty female-led community organisations, and twenty-five other Palestinian organisations. In addition, they coordinate a group of fourteen Palestinian environmental NGOs and visit communities affected by energy scarcity. In the centre of the Gaza Strip, in Waddi Alsalqa village, the Rural Women’s Development Society together with PENGON, has been able to install thirty two solar panels and batteries to power the kitchen where women cook and provide food for sale to the rest of the community. Prior to the installation of these solar panels, their work was constantly affected by prolonged power outages adding up to their hardships. Now, they count on independent energy efficiency and are able to invest the money used to pay the public electricity distribution company on themselves. In the northern Gaza Strip are of Alwaha, near the Gaza-Israeli border, another eighteen solar panels were installed in a local farm. This solar panel-generated electricity helps to light the farm, power the greenhouse and pump water from a well. The biggest challenge here is to replace expired batteries and repair solar panels that are hit by Israeli army missiles. The solar panel project was set up to support women’s participation and leadership in the context of low social acceptance and scant state support. This project gives women space to improve their skills at community and organisation level, and to be more active in lobbying and advocacy spaces for influencing gender laws and energy policies.\
9 No Bicycle, No Planet Friends of the Earth El Salvador (CESTA) GUAZAPA, EL SALVADOR ENERGY 2021–2022 https://cesta-foe.org.sv/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? To reduce the impacts of climate change, CESTA’s “No Bicycle, No Planet” campaign promotes bicycle transport in Guazapa, with bicycle ordinances, cycle routes, 6 women with bicycle workshops and road safety education for 1,000 young people. At the national level, fifty bicycle workshops have been established, of which twenty are run by women, 5000 students have received road safety education, a bicycle promotion law was passed, twelve municipalities now have bicycle ordinances, and are building bicycle lanes. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The programme ‘No bicycle, no planet’ in Guazapa, a municipality with few public transportation options located 24 kilometres north of El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, sets an example for the use of bikes as a sign of freedom, sustainability and empowerment for the rest of the country. Friends of the Earth El Salvador (CESTA) programme’s three fundamental components are: work with the municipality, work with educational centres, and implementation of activities to engage women. As well as revolutionising transport by promoting the use of bicycles, the project has empowered women, delivering increased autonomy and sustainability. In bicycle repair workshops, women have been taught new skills that they are now using in their own repair stores, thus providing income for their family and teaching their children to do the same. In this way, women are gaining financial independence and breaking the stereotype that bicycle-related jobs can only be done by men. In a space called ‘network of workshops’, which brings together more than fifty active women, they work to promote bicycle use with mass cycling events and to demand safer spaces for bikes and cyclist-friendly road signs. Young people in educational centres are also demanding the same, and the municipality and community is responding positively to their demands. To date, the municipality has approved an ordinance to promote the use of bicycles and has allocated resources to make the roads safer for cyclists. At the national level, the central government has enabled bicycle lanes and begun to limit the speed of automobiles on some roads to 30km/h. Twelve other municipalities have emulated Guazapa but the hope is that many more also will follow suit.
10 Women for Food Sovereignty in Cochabamba Women In Progress of Carcaje COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA FOOD 2021–2022 https://cioeccochabamba.com/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? The Women In Progress of Carcaje organization is a group of fifteen women dedicated to the production and commercialization of organic vegetables under an associative and solidarity economy scheme. This enterprise, identified by the EcoMujer brand and certified by the SPG (Participatory Guarantee System), promotes ecology and the social and economic empowerment of women, and fights for the food security of women rural producers and the preservation of biodiversity to be included in public policy agendas. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The Organización Social de Mujeres en Progreso de Complejo Carcaje – Azirumani “Bartolina Sisa” is twenty kilometres away from the city of Cochabamba. The region where they live, the Valle Alto, was known as the granary of Bolivia, and used to produce maize, wheat and potatoes. In the last decade, the intense use of chemical fertilizers and the effects of climate change have reduced organic production, damaged the environmental ecosystem and dismantled the formerly strong food sovereignty relationships. Since 2014, eleven women began to dedicate themselves entirely to growing vegetables and rescuing organic farming practices, recovering seeds and natural bio-inputs. Their most difficult challenge was to become productive, be economically sustainable and capable of self-managing and organising themselves. They went from monoculture to producing many different types of vegetables in their family gardens, such as cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce, among others. The water harvesting and automated irrigation allows them to have continuity in irrigation and to save water. They prioritize healthy self-consumption in their families and a renewable and varied system with plants that revitalize the soil. Their strength is the organisation and the weekly meetings where they weigh the vegetables, fill out control sheets, follow up on their individual earnings and plan future harvests according to the season and to market demands. On the organisational side, the women have developed different skills, such as decision-making, conflict management, and long-term strategic objectives. The organisation is also succeeding in gaining a voice in political spaces in the municipality, fighting for the introduction of sustainable policies that promote food sovereignty in their territory. Thanks to the help of other organisations, an associative marketing proposal has been developed. In this way, they were able to open a direct sales market in Cochabamba to sell their products, the Kampesino shop. They certify and promote their products with the ‘EcoMujer’ brand, with the aim of valuing the dignified work of women throughout the production process, making them visible as farmers, caregivers, processors and marketers, so that they are no longer unknown and undervalued.
11 Linking urban consumers to rural producers Sahaja Aharam HYDERABAD, INDIA FOOD 2021–2022 https://sahajaaharam.com/about-us WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Sahaja Aaharam is an Independent Farmer Produce Company promoted by the Center for Sustainable Agriculture. It is dedicated to connecting and creating awareness among farmers and consumers through producer co-operatives. They aim to ensure maximum financial and economic benefit to the farmers, to provide nutritional food choices to the consumers and to bring ecological benefits to the environment. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The not-for-profit Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA), which works with farmers, formed Sahaja Aharam in 2014 as the bridge between food growers and consumers. It’s a federation of over a dozen cooperatives to create a small farmers’ organic brand and store: Sahaja Aharam, which means Natural Food in the Telugu language. This is an organic brand evolving out of the collectivization of small and marginal farmers to create a local food system that aspires to be sustainable and chemical-free. CSA handholds producer collectives, builds capacities and provides important services, and connects them to markets and end-consumers. They also hold awareness programmes and events for urban consumers to educate them about their food systems. Sahaja Aharam has decentralised systems: aggregation, primary processing, secondary value addition at local village or cluster-level hubs that are cost-effective and manageable. Sahaja does not allow its perishables to go waste. Through solar food dryers, they convert the waste or unsold greens into dried vegetables to extend their shelf life and sell in a different way to buyers. Each of the Sahaja cooperatives is unique, non-replicable and scalable; the structures and designs of the organization are adaptable to different conditions. Sahaja Aharam is a model of community-managed local food systems. They succeeded in tapping markets at a time when the Indian government was opening up food retail to multinational corporations. One of the participating cooperatives, the Gayathri Mahila Rythula Mutually-aided Cooperative Society is a caste- and age-diverse community of 250 women farmer members that produces and sells organic food to consumers in the city. The strength of the collective lies in standing together, learning together, and sharing the journey together. They also distribute free seeds to anybody within the village. Most members of the group are marginal farmers who have over the years managed to win their most important title: a land title. More than merely producing and selling the organic products, the collective has brought about a fundamental change in the way people view women farmers and farming.
12 Relocation of road construction project affected slum dwellers Kirtipur Sambriddha Awas KIRTIPUR, NEPAL HOUSING 2021–2022 https://www.lumanti.org.np/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Kirtipur Housing Project is the first planned urban relocation project in Nepal. This project gave a successful alternative to forced eviction. The project was initiated by Kathmandu Metropolitan City in partnership with Lumanti a non-profit making organization dedicated to the alleviation of poverty in Nepal through the improvement of shelter, and the communities, to relocate the slum families affected by the road construction project. A total of forty-three families were relocated to a green and spacious settlement with each house built on 444 sq.ft of land. Establishment of an ‘Urban Community Support Fund’ proved to be a successful approach in the sustainability of the project. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Seventeen years have gone, the original owners and their families still live in the Kirtipur Housing Project. When the homeless families living in the slums received a three-day eviction notice due to the construction of a new road, the Lumanti Support Group for Shelter sought a permanent, long-term solution that would work out for all the parties concerned: the families needed a home, the municipality needed the road, and the government needed rules and regulations adhered to. First, the Urban Community Support Fund was established with the mayor as the chairperson, Lumanti as its secretariat and the representation of slum dwellers, the private sector, and the civil society on the board. They found a plot of land auctioned by a bank and the resettlement project won the bid. The land is collectively owned by the community. Only the houses built on that land could be owned by the residents but not the land itself. Houses would be paid for by the owners over 15 years through regular installment payments. After that, architects were assigned and house and community designs were explored in a participatory way. Housing plots were distributed through a lottery system to avoid unfair distribution of locations. When construction started, the soon to be residents monitored progress and quality of material and labour. Essential amenities had to be set up. Road access to houses was part of the plan and construction but private electricity lines, water connections, sewage, and more had to be set up. The community became an example on how rainwater harvesting could be achieved, and managed. There was no sewage system in the area, so a reed-based wastewater treatment system was set up, which hasbecome an example nationwide. These were important interventions as it was only 15 years later that the municipality could provide drinking water to every household in the neighbourhood. Now, thanks to the cooperation and partnership of different groups, everyone in the community has work, no one has issues related to livelihood and the quality of life is a lot better.
13 Million Wells Bengaluru Mannu Vaddars BENGALURU, INDIA WATER 2021–2022 http://biometrust.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Bengaluru City meets a large part of its water needs from deep groundwater. As Bengaluru gets paved over, recharge from rainfall reduces, and the city floods. If the residents and institutions of the city dig a million wells, it would not only help send rainwater to replenish the water table and mitigate flooding but also help revive the livelihoods of the Mannu Vaddars, a traditional but marginalized well-digging community. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Bengaluru sits on the rocky Deccan Plateau. Without a river or a coastline nearby, the city initially relied on water from its wells and tanks (man-made lakes), many of which are centuries old. As the city grew, water was piped from the River Kaveri, 100 km away. However, the city’s water utility has not been able to keep up with Bengaluru’s rapid growth, and deep groundwater from borewells has been widely used to make up for the shortfall. As the extraction of groundwater has been largely unregulated, it has led to Bengaluru’s deep aquifer levels dropping to alarming levels. The Million Wells campaign by Biome Environmental Trust is an ecological literacy campaign that encourages citizens to take responsibility for collectively managing and conserving groundwater. It aims to inculcate a sustainable water culture – one where the citizens become stewards of their shared natural resources and where water becomes visible again. This connection has been lost after the advent of borewells, because the link between the source and the resource is hidden from the eye. Over the past seven years, the communication campaign to build awareness, educate and help citizens change their behaviours around water usage has helped build a sense of collective ownership over the shallow aquifer, and many communities have set their own targets for digging wells. In addition, by focusing on the livelihoods of the marginalised community of well-diggers, the campaign has integrated their traditional knowledge and skills into the process of open well revival, which has restored and improved their livelihoods and self-worth. The Million Wells campaign in Bengaluru responds rather innovatively to the urgency of India’s water and sanitation crisis with the revival of the shallow aquifer and its focus on traditional knowledge and marginalised communities in urban environments. The central government has taken notice of it, and plans to roll it out in 500 towns and cities across India.
14 Agua Para Todos tackles water privatization and the impact of climate change Unión de Agua Potable Rural de la Cuenca del Río Petorca PETORCA, CHILE WATER 2020 http://www.aguaparatodos.cl/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? The triple challenges of water privatization, expanding agribusiness and the impact of climate change have caused a water crisis in the commune of Petorca, Valparaiso, Chile, where over 6000 people – mostly women and older people – live with a precarious water supply. Water for All is an initiative of the Unión de Agua Potable Rural (ARP), which generates sustainable solutions to the water crisis, strengthens community mobilization, uses socially appropriate technology to conserve and reclaim water, and provides environmental education. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Created in 2014 and with very little state support, we supply drinking water to rural communities in Petorca. One of our first actions was to forge alliances with institutions that understand water as a human right and common good, including the University of Playa Ancha and the local government’s Office of Water Affairs. We also took to the streets in protest during the worst water shortages to show our despair at seeing our people sick and our animals dying because of lack of water. These radical actions have attracted media attention and pushed the authorities to take emergency measures. Our work in collaboration with residents in the commune has resulted in the guaranteeing and protection of water rights; new regulations guaranteeing water-source protection from contamination; treatment, recycling and reuse of sewage; harvesting water from rooftops and atmospheric surface runoff. We also have participatory monitoring of water quality – for example, through training and the use of a community water quality kit we’ve increased community participation in the care and sustainable use of water. We have also attended congress on different occasions to demand a change to the water law. The municipal government has been most receptive to our call, with the municipality of Petorca creating the Office of Water Affairs, the first of its kind in Chile. Guaranteeing water has allowed us to “sow the future”, to show that it is possible to stay in the state and build a dignified life. And by acting to improve community water systems, we have improved the quality of life of Petorca families through better access to drinking water. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the situation in our state: many rural residents do not have easy access to potable water, and the water they consume from emergency trucks is of very low quality. This precarious access to water in the face of a pandemic has been linked with several cases of the virus in the province. This has led to complaints of human rights violations being filed with the National Institute of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
15 The municipality of Burgas pioneers energy efficient housing in Bulgaria Burgas energy efficient housing BURGAS, BULGARIA ENERGY 2020 https://www.burgas.bg/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Fifteen years ago, the Bulgarian town of Burgas was highly energy inefficient, leading to very high energy costs for local authorities and citizens, as well as poor living conditions and environmental inequality. Today it is a different story. Burgas is a smart, energy efficient city implementing the most up-to-date energy approaches and measures, and demonstrates the power of local authorities to drive sustainable change. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Energy efficiency was one of the priorities we laid down in Burgas Municipality’s Municipal Plans and Sustainable Energy Action Plan between 2007 and 2020. Today, the entire population of Burgas Municipality (232,000 people) have directly or indirectly benefitted from our decision. All public buildings have been retrofitted, providing better living conditions for inhabitants. Children, young people and teachers have benefitted from the retrofitting of 98% of kindergartens and schools, and local businesses have benefitted from investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, which in turn has helped them to develop and grow. The council’s huge investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, efficient street lighting, and smart management systems – implemented with the support of EU funds, and state and private resources – are turning the city into a smart and sustainable place to live. We established a special directorate, specialised in the development and implementation of EU-funded projects, as most of the measures were implemented with the support of the EU. Additional municipal experts in energy efficiency and energy audits and climate change were employed to maximise the benefits from these measures. Citizens are now actively searching for ways to retrofit their homes. Our municipality is now leading the country when it comes to energy efficient living, with more than 200 residential buildings retrofitted under the National EE Programme and the number of hybrid and e-vehicles in the city constantly rising. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT The COVID-19 outbreak had no drastic impact on our implementation of energy efficiency measures, as some of them took place before the emergence of the epidemic. Those initiatives that are currently being implemented in ways that comply fully with national requirements to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
16 CaSanAT is a micro-utopia serving as a space for exchange, learning and resistance Amigos de la Tierra Brasil / Amigos da Terra Brasil PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL HOUSING 2020 http://www.amigosdaterrabrasil.org.br/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? CaSanAT (an abbreviation of ‘house’ and ‘nature’ in Portuguese) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, is a space for social activists and volunteers to come together for community discussions and action on socio-environmental issues. As such, it is fighting hunger, the pandemic and repression by the Bolsonaro government. Today, as a space for social organization and education in thinking about city, it is working to strengthen communities and act as a hub for the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Construction of the CaSanAT centre started in around 2004, when a derelict building was converted using solar and other clean technologies. The walls are plastered with lime and not cement, almost all the bricks, frames and doors were recycled, and the plants in the backyard provide food and shelter on hot days. The patio has bananas all year round, along with passion fruit, herbs and avocado. CaSanAT has established a local fairtrade farmers’ market, and a library containing a collection of more than 3,000 cataloged publications on the environment and documents containing the history of the gaúcho people and Brazilian environmental movements. The centre has also enabled people to reclaim their right to the centre of the city and has reached out to the wider community and various indigenous communities in the hope that – as a model – it might be replicated elsewhere. The centre has this year been targeted for closure by the Bolsonaro government – a move that the centre challenged in court, and from which it has won a temporary reprieve. The battle did not deter the centre from running its operation to help people struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic. By distributing food and hygiene products to thousands of families, the centre has been plugging gaps left by the Bolsonaro government’s handling of the pandemic. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT Since March of 2020, CaSanAT has acted as a repository for fairly traded food and hygiene products bought through donations. The involvement of different political actors and social movements and the solidarity shown during Covid19 has united local, working class communities in the face of the pandemic and the oppression by the Bolsonaro government.
17 Penca de Sábila Corporation improves the lives of rural farmers and connects them with urban communities Corporación Ecológica y Cultural Penca de Sábila MEDELLÍN, COLOMBIA FOOD 2020 http://www.corpenca.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Penca de Sábila Corporation is successfully helping 12,000 small-scale farming families in rural Medellín to transition towards agroecology (organic farming. Their method uses fair marketing and selling of surplus directly through a cooperative store, the creation of legal instruments for the protection of the territory’s peasants and the formation of alliances with peasant associations and universities. The economic benefits are shared annually in assemblies in which all smallholder families participate. The corporation is also putting rural farmers’ needs on the state’s agenda, and is calling for support for them against the backdrop of COVID-19. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS To date we have set up two peasant associations made up of farms that produce food agroecologically (whereby the use of pesticides in agricultural activities is reduced or eliminated), and market and sell their produce through the Colyflor Solidarity Economic Circuit (a fair-trade rural producers network). In addition, we’ve successfully pushed for the Rural Peasant District of Medellín to be included in Medellín’s recent Territorial Organization Plans and in the region’s development plans. Through training on agroecology principles, run by the School of Agroecology, skills and capacity have been extended to dozens of young people and small-scale farmers in the region, while social mobilization for the defence of peasant rights (involving meetings, forums, debates, marches, sit-ins, seed exchanges, collection of signatures) has also been achieved. This work has benefitted 104 peasant farmers and organisations that are part of the Colyflor Store supplier network. We’ve also set up the Valle de Aburrá Peasant Assembly, an alliance between families and peasant organizations in the Valle de Aburrá bioregion. Our work shows it is essential to promote peasants’ rights and agroecology as an alternative production model as it is directly linked to an improvement in the health of producers, consumers and ecosystems, given the close link that exists between human, animal and ecological health. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT In Medellín, the COVID-19 crisis has put the importance of food sovereignty centre stage, alongside the needs of the peasant population living on the outskirts of the city. We denounced how COVID-19 plans showed a lack of institutional support for rural communities to guarantee the distribution of their crops, and the unacceptable paradox that saw farming families lose their unsold crops while families in city neighborhoods went hungry. It appears that concern or awareness for responsible consumption has increased among parts of the population, and that rural people’s issues have found their place (to some degree) on the public, political and media agenda of those with power in urban areas.
18 ‘Our Water Our Right’ campaign mobilization against water privatisation Environmental Rights Action (ERA) – Friends of the Earth Nigeria LAGOS, NIGERIA WATER 2019, 2018 http://www.erafoen.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Since 2014, the ‘Our Water Our Rights’ Campaign has mobilised civil society, labour and grassroots groups to resist water privatisation across Lagos, and broadened citizen engagement in resolving the city’s water crisis. Against the odds, it has also increased government spending on water and sanitation in the city. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS When ERA learned that Lagos state government was secretly negotiating a public-private partnership for its water supply – in a city already severely underserved in terms of water services – it decided to launch its own investigation, working with a range of national and international organisations to mobilise citizens across the capital. This entailed not only making people aware of the government’s plans to privatise their water utilities, but also to educate them about what privatisation would imply. The campaign targeted the company Visionscape Sanitation Solutions, which had the sole contract for waste management in Lagos and was also part of a public-private partnership for water. People posted photos on social media to show how dirty their streets had become since Visionscape took over waste management in Lagos. As a result the company’s waste contract was terminated and the government took back control of waste management. The campaign has also had more structural successes such as the cancellation of the government’s contract with the World Bank as an advisor in the privatisation scheme; pushing the government to reserve US$185 million dollars in its budget for clean water access; and uniting many different organisations, social movements and communities in Lagos under one message. While privatisation plans are still on the government’s agenda, our campaign continues until the goal of water as a constitutionalised human right is achieved.
19 Barcelona Energia Barcelona en Comú BARCELONA, SPAIN ENERGY 2019 https://barcelonaencomu.cat/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Since February 2018, Barcelona City Council’s public electricity distributor Barcelona Energia has managed the electricity market for all the energy generated by the city and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area – some 200 GWh/year. Barcelona Energia is one of the great triumphs of ‘Brave Barcelona’, which is standing up to corporate lobbies and achieving autonomy and power for its citizens. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Since July 2018, Barcelona Energía (BE), a public renewable energy company that offers an alternative to large corporate energy providers, has been managing the electricity of the city council and a growing number of citizens. This is part of the municipality’s plan to achieve energy self-sufficiency by installing solar panels on the roofs of publicly owned buildings, such as libraries, markets and civic centres. A working group comprising the municipal group of the city council and the ecological movement of Barcelona in Comú created BE to challenge the energy giants; play an active role in the energy market; fill the city with renewable, locally produced energy; improve efficiency and self-sufficiency; and place residents at the heart of decision making, guaranteeing them the right to energy. BE is now the largest 100% public renewable electricity distributor in Spain. Cities such as Cádiz, Pamplona and Palma de Mallorca are also opting for models similar to those in Barcelona. It is an instrument to promote and encourage the local generation of renewable energy (mainly solar energy), both for municipal facilities and for residents of Barcelona (self-generation for own use). In July 2019, BE began supplying electricity to Barcelona City Council buildings and facilities and to 19 bodies and entities in the municipal companies group, serving a total of 3,908 supply points. In 2019, it also started to provide the service to facilities in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area and to citizens, up to a maximum of 20,000 homes.
20 Integrated social reconstruction homes in Isthmus of Tehuantepec Cooperación Comunitaria A.C. IXTEPEC, MEXICO HOUSING 2019 http://www.cooperacioncomunitaria.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? In September 2017 the most powerful earthquake in Mexico’s history badly damaged the traditionally built homes of indigenous communities in Oaxaca. The municipal government moved in to demolish them – destroying the architectural heritage that the families depended on for their livelihoods and replacing it with modern and inadequate housing. But the intervention of local NGO Cooperación Comunitaria A.C. changed everything – galvanising the community to build homes not only able to withstand earthquakes, but also constructed using traditional techniques and tailored to the climate and culture. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The Ixtepecano Committee, a local community organisation, contacted Cooperación Comunitaria A.C to rebuild the homes. CC conducted assessments of the damage and the families’ vulnerability, including a mapping exercise, and through assemblies and meetings, a reconstruction model was agreed with the families. Traditional ovens and kitchens were included in the reconstruction with the aim of reactivating local women’s livelihoods, as was the building of an Arts and Trades Centre that would be used to train people to make kitchens using traditional building techniques. And it didn’t stop there: local maize varieties were reintroduced for the making of local staple totopos, while a series of workshops was run to improve construction skills and to train people on disaster risk management, the use of natural resources, and the right to adequate housing. Photo credit: Cooperación Comunitaria A.C.CC’s architects and an engineer designed plans for 78 homes – 20 new and 58 reinforced – using traditional techniques and designs, including double brick walls at a height of 4 metres, and an area of 72 m2 which allows residents to be comfortable in the hot climate. By using local materials, brick production in the area was reactivated and materials such as tiles, wood and bricks were salvaged for reuse. A guide to reinforcing traditional homes was produced and translated into the local language. To reactivate the women’s productive businesses, special, traditional ovens were reinforced at the base to make them earthquake resistant. To date, 107 women have restored their productive businesses thanks to the rebuilding of 196 traditional ovens and kitchens, and this has contributed to the recovery of the household economy. Proposals for two model kitchens were developed by women in community design workshops; 247 people learned about the relationship between natural resources and their habitat; and 73 builders learned how to reinforce their homes, kitchens, and their bread ovens using local materials.
21 Waste management innovation for food security and climate change mitigation Dajopen Waste Management KITALE, KENYA FOOD 2019 WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? A community in Kitale Town, Kenya, has come together to transform waste into valuable recycled products to sell – an activity designed to improve livelihoods, clean up local dwellings and the environment, and improve food and energy production. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS In Kitale, lack of clean energy for cooking, lighting and heating, and lack of fertiliser, led to the formation of community group Dajopen Waste Management. The group identified several ways to improve the situation, including collecting and recycling waste, planting trees on public land to increase forest cover, and the use of organic manure. A key aim of the initiative was to improve living conditions too, by eliminating the breeding grounds for mosquitoes, rodents and flies. With support from Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization the group was trained to hygienically collect, process and clean waste, and to use the waste to create products such as baskets, caps, floor mats, table mats, beads, necklaces and bags. Youths were trained in making briquettes from charcoal dust and paper pulp, thus improving their social status and incomes. Men were trained to recycle plastics into fencing posts, thereby reducing the need for wooden posts, reducing deforestation, helping to secure land and homes from land grabbers, ending housing boundary conflicts. Recycled roofing tiles were also produced, making them affordable for low-income families to improve their homes. Men were also trained to make compost from biodegradable green and solid waste, and food waste. Most community members have increased their crop yields by using organic manure, and soil fertility has increased. Using proceeds from the recycled items, the community is now able to send its children to school and to cater for their health.
22 Community-led response to water pollution crisis Fundación Abril/Plataforma de Acuerdos Públicos Comunitarios (PAPC) Públicos Comunitarios (PAPC) COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA WATER 2018 http://www.fundacionabril.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? An estimated 52% of Bolivia’s population have no access to sanitation and 80% of wastewater is not treated before re-entering the environment. The Water and Sanitation for All project aimed to guarantee the right to sanitation in the San Pedro Magisterio neighbourhood by successfully building and running a wastewater treatment plant and strengthening community management of the entire water cycle through the neighbourhood’s Cooperativa de Agua San Pedro Magisterio. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Pollution in Cochabamba’s river reached such high levels in 2012 that the government declared it an “environmental disaster”. The Water and Sanitation for All project was born from a demand and a request from a community: the San Pedro Magisterio cooperative felt the need to treat domestic wastewater in its area to avoid polluting the Rocha River and the environment. Assemblies with all cooperative members were held to discuss the technical design of the water treatment plant, improvements to domestic use of the sewerage system, and the introduction of a new tariff structure guaranteeing the system’s economic sustainability – all of which encouraged the community to take ownership of the initiative. The cooperative committed to taking on the running of the treatment plant once built, and environmental awareness activities were held in the local school. But it was not all plain sailing. The municipality, through its water operator, attempted to sabotage the project, criticizing the technical design of the plant and refusing to issue the environmental permits required to execute the project. It also tried to divide the community. But the community’s unity and determination overcame this, challenging the state-municipal authorities by defending their right to manage water as a community, establishing alliances (with other neighbourhoods and public servants) to resist political pressure, and strengthening their participatory and transparent internal decision-making mechanisms. The project is now responsible for treating the wastewater from 300 families, and for improvements to the hygiene and sanitary conditions in the San Pedro neighbourhood.
23 Energy transition built on democracy, renewables and jobs Mesa de Transición Energética de Cádiz CÁDIZ, SPAIN ENERGY 2018 http://www.transicionenergeticacadiz.es/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? In May 2015, a coalition of citizen-candidates, Por Cádiz Sí Se Puede (For Cádiz, Yes We Can) and Ganar Cádiz (Win Cádiz) was elected to municipal government, with renewable energy as its platform. One of the new municipal government’s main objectives was to take advantage of local resources – the port and shipyards – to promote an energy transition as a way to rebuild the city’s social and productive life. This strategy is now paying dividends. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The four City of Cádiz priorities for the energy transition are savings, efficiency and renewables in public buildings; the fight against energy poverty; the promotion of a democratic energy transition; and the promotion of energy-related job creation. These activities are carried out using profits derived from the local government’s 55% share of Électrica de Cádiz, the largest private-public electric company in the country, and are informed by two working groups on energy – both of which involve local people’s groups: The Mesa contra la Pobreza Energética (the Roundtable to Fight against Energy Poverty) and the Mesa de Transición Energética de Cádiz (MTEC, Roundtable on the Energy Transition in Cádiz). MTEC has created a permanent space for the participation and collaboration of municipal specialists, environmental organisations, individuals, workers from the University of Cádiz and Eléctrica de Cádiz, and members of the Som Energía cooperative. It has also promoted the conversion of Eléctrica de Cádiz into a 100% renewable energy supply company, developed an energy literacy campaign, and enabled Électrica de Cádiz to improve the environmental rating of all its municipal building contracts (and of 80% of the city’s residents). Eléctrica de Cádiz has managed to win the contracts of two other municipalities in the province, taking them out of the hands of oligopolistic companies. This was possible thanks to the inclusion of the requirement of 100% certified renewable electricity in the tender documents. MTEC’s initiatives are all taking the energy model debate to the street and to local institutions.
24 Women Workers Association builds tens of thousands of homes Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU) SOLAPUR, INDIA HOUSING 2018 http://www.knowledgecommons.in/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? In 1992, the dismal living conditions of around 65,000 beedi (cigarette) workers in Solapur prompted the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) to secure affordable and decent housing for them. Beginning with housing for the beedi workers – mainly women who were their families’ sole bread winners – the initiative has expanded to include textile workers and other unorganized sector workers. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The struggle began with workers in Solapur, under the leadership of CITU, demanding affordable housing from the government. When their demands were ignored, the workers mounted their struggle, forming cooperative housing societies and purchasing land on their own. Through mass mobilisations, protest actions and campaigns, they forced the central and state governments to allot funds for the construction of houses. Three housing schemes have been formulated so far. The first, the Comrade Godutai Parulekar Housing Scheme, has been hailed as the biggest cooperative housing project for workers in Asia. The construction for this 10,000-house project started in 2001 and was completed in 2006. The women took part in designing the homes, and the whole project has been designed and built by a local construction firm. The second scheme – the Comrade Meenakshitai Sane Housing Scheme – involved building 1,600 houses for women beedi workers and was inaugurated in 2015. The third scheme is by far the biggest, and aims to construct 30,000 affordable houses for beedi workers, textile workers and other unorganised sector workers. The central and state governments sanctioned the project in 2016, and it will include all basic infrastructure and amenities including schools, a college, hospital, market, places of worship, roads, water and electricity.
25 Maison d’Éducation à l’Alimentation Durable supplies the community with organic food and educates future generations Center For Sustainable Food Education MOUANS-SARTOUX, FRANCE FOOD 2020 http://mouans-sartoux.net/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Maison d’Éducation à l’Alimentation Durable (MEAD, the Center for Sustainable Food Education) is a holistic municipal initiative in Mouans-Sartoux, France, that is enabling the town to transition to consuming organic and sustainably produced food. Since its launch, MEAD has prioritised the health of its children, families, older people, local companies, students, researchers and public authorities – and the needs of sustainable agriculture – through progressive food policy. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Since 2012, the town’s school canteens have been serving 100% organic food, with 96% of the vegetables produced in Mouans-Sartoux itself (organic food limits the residue of pesticides and endocrine disrupters, etc. in adults’ and children’s food). The town has also reduced the food loss and waste in school canteens by 80%, and includes two vegetarian meals in their weekly menu. Mouans-Sartoux was an early adopter of the idea of diversifying proteins in people’s diet, and has driven a threefold increase in the provision of agricultural land for sustainable farming in the area. We run workshops and classes for children on sustainable food, and 51 families were or are being supported through a targeted six-month programme to shift towards more sustainable food habits. In addition, we’re supporting 100 families through a social grocery store, have engaged 21 companies on their use of sustainable food, and have also reached several thousand people through our festivals and events organised by the Town Hall. In a survey carried out in 2019, 87% of parents reported to us that they had changed their habits to eat more sustainable local, organic healthy food. Our team of six to eight people is led by a steering committee, comprising elected officials, scientists, institutions and local people. They meet twice yearly to evaluate existing actions and propose new ideas. There is also a local group made up of local stakeholders and residents that meets regularly to make new proposals and strengthen our project. Our success story has generated much interest in France and abroad. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT Following the COVID-19 outbreak we had to cancel many of our planned events. However, the municipal farm continued to produce vegetables, some of which were used for the few meals served in the school canteen for the children of health workers and municipal employees who continued to work during the crisis. The surplus was frozen on site and food was donated to the nearest hospital and the town’s social grocery store. The MEAD regularly posted ideas for recipes and gardening activities on its Facebook page to help parents occupy their children during lockdown. Despite the challenges posed by the crisis, it can be seen as an opportunity to increase awareness about food resilience among local people and also at a wider scale.
26 Observatorio del Agua de Terrassa ensures a democratic governance of water Observatorio del Agua de Terrassa TERRASSA, SPAIN WATER 2020 https://www.oat.cat/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Since 1842 the water supply in Terrassa – one of the largest cities in Catalonia – was managed by a private company. The clear need for a modern service with water as a common good resulted in the creation of the Terrassa Water Observatory (OAT) and the subsequent transformation in the city’s relationship with water. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS OAT’s goal is to re-municipalize in order to manage water as a common good, and to strengthen Terrassa’s citizens’ right to water and sanitation, and to a healthy environment. As part of the city council, OAT works to enable citizens to be part of decision-making in relation to water issues. Although its resources come from the town council, OAT is committed to the social solidarity economy; it works with the University of Catalonia (UPC) in Terrassa on aspects related to water quality. OAT has promoted the Social Pact for Public Water in the city, and urged political parties standing for election to sign it and ratify it publicly. It has drawn up a Charter for Water in the City, inspired by the experience of Berlin, and promoted open debate on water management to the entire city. The observatory meets with all water stakeholders in the city, including all political parties. Work takes place at the city level through coordination with actors promoting the new water culture to bring water closer to the city as a whole.
27 EnergÉtica Cooperative challenges energy poverty by supplying clean energy Cooperativa EnergÉtica VALLADOLID, SPAIN ENERGY 2020 https://www.energetica.coop/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Valladolid’s Energética Cooperative grew as a response to the 2008 financial crisis when, in protest against energy poverty and the failure of central government to plan for a clean energy transition, local citizens demanded sustainable energy solutions. Today, Energética Cooperative has signed agreements with ten regional municipalities and supplies energy to each of them. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Today, Energética has 2,200 electricity retail contracts (30% of which are in the city of Valladolid, representing 89% of households) and services 11% of the city’s industrial and service users. All of our energy comes from renewable sources: a small portion is produced at our Valteína mini-hydro power plant, and the rest is acquired from the national electricity market, but only from renewable producers (guaranteed through renewable origin certificates from those producers). In 2017 (our first year of productive activity), our turnover was €12,000, while the projected turnover for 2020 is €205,000k (although this figure will inevitably be affected by the COVID-19 crisis). This gives an indication of the cooperative’s steady growth. Despite state-level (conservative) opposition and traditional energy companies discrediting our efforts, we have successfully promoted citizen participation and empowerment and have managed to incorporate the principles and values of a new energy model into the agenda of many local organisations in Valladolid, including the University of Valladolid, labour unions, political parties, NGOs, and other municipalities. We are at the heart of an ecological transformation, and we stress the need to reduce overall energy consumption and improve energy efficiency as much as possible. Our campaign to promote solar energy to households has been backed by the Valladolid municipality. A system we have created to provide electricity from batteries and solar PV that can be transported by bike is regularly lent to social organisations to replace diesel generators at many public events – reducing pollution, greenhouse gases and noise. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT The COVID-19 outbreak affected our work significantly given that visits to customers are a regular activity of our staff, who need to check on the viability of installing self-consumption solar PV, or of retrofitting a building. Our work plan had therefore to be redesigned to give more weight to tasks that are achievable when working from home, such as improving online communication, for example recording original videos in a light-hearted tone to increase social awareness about energy issues, and recording video tutorials so those installing self-consumption PV can maintain their systems autonomously.
28 The Cloughjordan Ecovillage models the transition to a low-carbon society Sustainable Projects Ireland CLG (SPI) CLOUGHJORDAN, TIPPERARY, IRELAND HOUSING 2020, 2019 http://www.thevillage.ie/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Cloughjordan Ecovillage models the transition to a low-carbon society and shares its learning through various educational activities. With 55 low-carbon homes, a carbon-neutral district heating system, a community farm, green enterprise centre, a planned reed-bed treatment plant and Ireland’s lowest ecological footprint, the ecovillage is demonstrating different ways to achieve ecological, economic and social sustainability. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The Cloughjordan Ecovillage emerged 20 years ago thanks to a group of pioneers concerned at the lack of public awareness of climate change and the need to build sustainability. Two decades on, Cloughjordan Ecovillage is now widely recognised as a unique community that illustrates the potential to live a low-carbon lifestyle while developing livelihoods. In 2019, more than 1600 people attended the educational tours and courses that the ecovillage offers as a way to provide knowledge and inspiration to the broader community. This is in addition to hundreds of people who came to a range of festivals such as the August permaculture festival and the September apple festival. Universities in Ireland and in the US regularly bring students on study visits as part of their academic courses, allowing for immersive learning experiences. The ecovillage is also a place where students and academics from Ireland and overseas undertake research on aspects of low-carbon living. Through our membership-based community farm, which feeds over 100 people with deliveries twice weekly throughout the year, and knock-on projects like the Middle Country Café on the main street using produce from the farm, or the Cloughjordan Community Amphitheatre providing a venue for festivals, concerts and plays, the village demonstrates the viability of local production, exchange and consumption. A vibrant cluster of businesses includes a 34-bed eco-hostel and RiotRye, a national award-winning wood-fired bakery and bakery Schoolthe, and on main street, a book and coffee shop. Knowing the urgency of the climate crisis, we seek new ways to share the lessons of building a resilient community, combining ecological with economic sustainability. COVID-19 ADAPTATION: The Covid-19 pandemic closed down our educational work and temporarily suspended our guided tours and courses. In response, we produced an online virtual tour, moved community meetings to Zoom, and continued to work in a socially distanced way on our farm. The pandemic has motivated us to develop new ways of offering our educational programme through developing a series of ‘Deep Listening’ webinars. We are also filming a short promotional video promoting tailored webinars for university and school groups. In these ways, the ecovillage is drawing a wider participation in its educational activities.
29 The Jackson Just Transition Plan is transforming Jackson into a city of equity, solidarity and mutual aid Cooperation Jackson JACKSON, MS, UNITED STATES FOOD 2020 https://cooperationjackson.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? The Jackson Just Transition Plan aims to transform Jackson, Mississippi, into an ecologically and economically regenerative city, rooted in equity, solidarity and mutual aid, where everyone’s fundamental human rights are fulfilled. Through creating people’s assemblies, developing an independent electoral force, and building the social and solidarity economy, the initiative successfully supported the election of progressive Mayors in 2013 and 2017. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Our work has kickstarted a growing network of cooperatives and solidarity economy organizations. Two of our key coalition activities include the Union-Coop Initiative (to build broad unity amongst working class people in Jackson), and the Coalition for Economic Justice (to monitor, challenge and propose primarily state-level legislation). We are currently trying to change state laws on cooperatives and workers’ rights in Mississippi, and laws that limit cooperatives to agricultural businesses, utilities, or credit unions. We are also engaged in a long-term campaign to strengthen working class organizations in the state. Finally, we are working hard to advance what we call “Just Transition Policies” in Jackson and to push the state to adopt a suite of laws that will combat climate change. We design everything we possibly can to reduce carbon emissions, overproduction, and overconsumption; do our best to recycle materials, e.g. recycling wood and bricks in our housing rehabilitation efforts in our community land trust. On top of this, we try to source and purchase our goods as close to Jackson as possible. All of these initiatives have helped provide quality employment and wages to a growing number of Jacksonians, and initiated a process to decommodify land. We’ve started the process of creating permanently affordable housing and are building a broad consensus on the need for food sovereignty. We’ve also laid the foundation for the development for a human rights charter and commission to respect, protect, and fulfill the basic human rights of all Jacksonians. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT Our economic activities have been greatly curtailed by COVID-19. We shut down all of our operations in March, except for Freedom Farms, because food production is critical during a crisis and because we could do it with proper physical distancing. However, we have significantly regrouped in new ways since April, especially through the production of personal protective equipment (PPE). Our Community Production Cooperative (CPC) perfected the art producing two types of masks, 1) a cloth mask, for mass distribution and 2) a 3D print mask, for frontline workers. We have given away well over 1000 cloth masks and over 200 3D print masks to doctors, nurses, dentists, and frontline factory and retail clerk workers. In the process, we tripled the productive capacity of the CPC and will start producing masks for commercial sale in August 2020, providing an additional four jobs in our community. This further proves the utility and transformative capacities of this type of production.
30 Eau de Paris delivers cheaper, cleaner water Eau de Paris PARIS, FRANCE WATER 2020, 2019 http://www.eaudeparis.fr/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? For a decade, Eau de Paris (EDP) has been improving Paris’ municipal water supply – a service that used to be fragmented and expensive. Supported by strong political will, the city of Paris has made water management a major democratic issue, ensuring better managed, high-quality and more affordable water supply, backed by a strong environmental strategy addressing the water sector’s economic, civic, social and environmental responsibilities. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Eau de Paris today provides a successful model for how to run modern metropolitan water services. As a commercial, publicly owned body, we provide drinking water to 3 million users per year, and our water is still cheaper for users than it was before re-municipalisation in 2010. Our users report 90% satisfaction with our service, and for the seventh year in a row (2018) we’ve been given France’s Customer Service of the Year award. Our status as a public company, backed by high-performance infrastructure, enables us to guarantee the lowest water price in the region (about €1 per cubic metre for the drinking-water portion of the bill) while re-investing all of our profits into our maintenance and modernisation programmes. Never before has the issue of water in the city been more talked about, from public fountains and swimming in the Seine, to water as a means to generate green energy or help homeless people or refugees in some of the city’s reception centres. Today, despite a context of a COVID-19-related decline in water consumption and rising costs (which are putting the whole sector under strain), Eau de Paris is in good economic and financial health. Our business model is particularly resilient and represents a strong example of effective, inclusive and sustainable public management. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT At the start of the pandemic, the bottled water industry immediately lobbied for people to use its products, so we re-ran our zero-waste campaign and reiterated our key messages: tap water is safe; drink public water; don’t create more plastic waste. None of our workers had to take a reduction in their paid working hours during the crisis, and we strengthened our contributions to help those struggling to pay their water bills. Our laboratory, which looks at water-borne viruses, worked with Paris University and other public research institutions to track the presence of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in urban waters (most importantly in used water). For the common good, our work to prove that analysing water is an efficient way to track the course of the pandemic has been made public. Covid-19 has meant a significant decrease in Paris’ water consumption and we will lose at least €12 million this year – a loss that in the short term is not an issue because our current financial situation is robust.
31 PENGON empowers Palestinian women as sustainable energy leaders PENGON-FOE Palestine WEST BANK & GAZA, PALESTINE ENERGY 2020, 2019 https://www.pengon.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Energy scarcity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip impacts women in different ways to men, yet women are very rarely consulted on energy solutions. PENGON’s ‘Empowering Women as Sustainable Energy Leaders’ initiative brings local women together to transform the energy system in Palestine, putting solar energy in their hands. It also empowers women to be active in decision-making around energy and to lead change in their communities. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS PENGON organised women-only discussion spaces throughout 2018 to 2020, which enabled women to participate freely in discussions on energy issues. Community workshops were held to discuss the importance of women’s participation, and strengthen social acceptance of the project. In the Gaza Strip, our work helps women build their skills at community and organisational level, and to become active in lobbying and advocacy spaces for influencing energy policies, thereby benefitting more than 800,000 citizens. Through our initiatives, which target low-income families and small businesses, electricity bills have hit zero thanks to the use of clean energy sources. We have provided technical capacity-building to train women to operate and maintain clean-energy technology, such as solar powered devices and water pumps in households, farms and training centres. This is alongside building women’s skills to run lobbying and advocacy campaigns to influence national clean energy polices. Many of our activities were designed to target the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Ministry of Energy and Natural resources, as governmental ministries are considered a key stakeholder of the project. One example is training ministries in how to apply gender mainstreaming in their work. As a result, in 2020 the Ministry of Women’s Affairs took an active part in building the capacity of the gender unit in the Energy Authority, and ensuring that the national clean energy strategy is sensitive to women’s needs. PENGON and our members have brought people-powered electricity to more than 270 households in the Gaza Strip. In the past, these communities struggled to access enough energy to meet their needs, and the limited amount they were getting came from dirty energy sources in Israel, such as coal. PENGON is also moving towards changing the law to protect the environment by increasing the share of Palestinian energy that comes from clean energy sources. COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT All Palestinian cities were placed under lockdown for three months from the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, resulting in delays to the implementation of solar energy projects. However, we started working again in these cities with some protective measures directly after the government opened them up. While the spread of COVID-19 has slowed progress in our lobbying work, one positive outcome is that when many activities moved online this enabled more stakeholders to be involved.
32 Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative Common Wise Education Inc. / Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES HOUSING 2019 https://bcdi.nyc/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative (BCDI) is a community-led effort to build an equitable, sustainable and democratic local economy that creates wealth and ownership for low-income people of colour. One of the primary ways it does this is by building a network of local leaders committed economic democracy, and helping them shift their organisations and institutions to take forward-looking, coordinated action to build shared wealth. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS BCDI’s Planning and Policy Lab supports long-standing community-based organisations to develop community-driven solutions with additional research, enhanced analytical tools and strategy support. The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative began when local grassroots organisations realised they needed to ensure that their communities, particularly working class people of colour who make up the majority of the Bronx’s 1.5 million residents, would be the primary decision-makers when it came to planning and economic development. They were galvanised by injustices such as the City’s disregard for a community-led plan to redevelop a vacant armory into much-needed schools, and its proposal instead for a shopping mall that would create low-quality jobs and threaten locally-owned businesses. Over the past three years BCDI has trained over 250 Bronx residents – most of whom have been leaders or staff of community-based organisations – in principles of economic democracy and systems of cooperative ownership. In part due to these trainings, several of these organizations have shifted their work to support economic democracy. One has made it an explicit goal and is supporting the creation of a community land trust. Another, whose work has long centred on environmental justice and resiliency, is now advocating for community ownership of resilience infrastructure.
33 Cargonomia Community Cargobike and Local Food Distribution Center Cargonomia BUDAPEST, HUNGARY FOOD 2019, 2018 https://cargonomia.hu/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Since 2015, Budapest-based Cargonomia has acted as a sustainable urban transport centre and local organic food distribution point through its cargo-bike messenger service, bicycle-building cooperative, family-scale organic vegetable farm, organic bakery, wine distributor and network of citizen volunteers. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The cooperative assists in supplying more than 3,000 organic food boxes per year, with messengers cycling nearly 18,000 km while servicing a 27 km2 section of the city annually. This directly reduces the environmental impact of food production and distribution that at a global level accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and an alarming amount of food waste. Cargonomia operates from a hub that serves as the messenger dispatch centre; food box pickup point; do-it-yourself repair workshop for bicycles, clothing and electronics; and logistics centre for sustainable urban transport solutions where community members can borrow locally manufactured cargo-bikes. Cargonomia aims to contribute to youth education by reinforcing the importance of hands on education in the fields of organic gardening and bicycle competency, and promotes its potential by organizing workshops with volunteer instructors. Cargonomia provides support to the budding urban gardening and agroforesty movement in Budapest by hosting events in partner garden locations and through the establishment of their first agroforestry test site in 2018 in Budapest. In 2018 they formally launched a community cargobike sharing network with their own resources. At the moment 11 cargobicycles, trailers, dog and child carriers are available to borrow ,hosted at 4 locations in the city. They have also launched an urban edible agroforestry project in cooperation with the Zuglo municipality in the city, where they have begun planting edible fruit trees, berries, aromatics and bee friendly flowers in a formerly abandoned illegal parking site in the district.
34 Barcelona en Comú Barcelona en Comú BARCELONA, SPAIN HOUSING 2018 https://barcelonaencomu.cat/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? In June 2014, activists in Barcelona formed a citizen’s platform to stand for election and “win back” the city from its centre-right city council, which the movement saw as having sold out the city to business interests. With little money or experience, the movement ousted the conservative political establishment, and is starting to bring change using a dynamic model of citizen engagement. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS In 2014, citizens aiming to “win back” Barcelona from its long-standing, right-wing council formed a movement to stand for election, backed by a collaboratively produced manifesto centered on four fundamental rights: to guarantee basic rights and a decent life for all citizens; boost the economy based on social and environmental justice; democratize institutions; and assume an ethical commitment to its citizens. It also proposed eradicating economic speculation, improving access to decent housing, and reducing dependence on tourism. All this was underpinned by an ethical commitment to citizens, and a policy of no debts to financial institutions. In September 2014, 30,000 people signed and validated the manifesto. Candidates were selected to represent Barcelona en Comú in the elections, and a crowdfunding project was launched to fund the campaign. Barcelona en Comú won the city elections. Barcelona en Comú’s remunicipalization plans for its water supplies have been strongly attacked by right-wing neoliberal parties, but the movement’s coalition-building with water activists and other cities (that successfully remunicipalized the water supply service) has helped withstand this. In stark contrast to water, there has been no political opposition to the movement’s energy proposals, and a municipal electricity company is set to be launched to start generating electricity for self consumption and to be sold to an increasing number of citizens. The municipality wants to achieve energy self-sufficiency by installing solar panels on the roofs of publicly-owned buildings, such as libraries, markets and civic centres. And on housing too, victories have been won: a limit on the number of licences for tourist apartments; fines for owners of multiple properties who leave them empty; reform of municipal buildings in the city centre to create public housing, and authorization for municipal land in the city centre to be used by housing cooperatives.
35 Earthworker Cooperative Friends of the Earth Australia / Earthworker Cooperative MELBOURNE, MORWELL, AUSTRALIA ENERGY 2019 https://earthworkercooperative.com.au/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? For 22 years Earthworker Cooperative has brought the environment/climate movement together with the labour movement to build cooperative manufactories and other cooperatives to enable communities to find ways out of the climate emergency. Today it is supporting a growing network of cooperatives in manufacturing, energy, and service sectors, including the award-winning Redgum Cleaning Cooperative. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The Earthworker project was set up by tra­des unionists who were also environmentalists, and who realised they could use their social weight to help the state of Victoria undertake a ‘just transition’ to a low-carbon economy, and empower fossil-fuel dependent regions like the Latrobe Valley community through dignified, democratic employment and socially and environmentally useful enterprise. Earthworker’s flagship initiative is the Earthworker Energy Manufacturing Cooperative, a worker-run factory producing premium quality solar hot water and energy storage products for Australian households and businesses in Victoria’s coal region in Morwell. Return to Morwell Factory Open, Bulk Buy Kicks off! Photo credit: Earthworker Cooperative The cooperative sells its products to customers, governments and through union Enterprise Bargaining Agreements. The Maritime Union of Australia is the first major union to place the Earthworker Clause into their Agreements. This means that waterfront workers will be able to obtain local cooperative-manufactured products, as part of their negotiated wage rise, which means they create climate jobs and reduce their energy bills. Earthworker is focused on social and environmentally just outcomes and have already placed solar hot water systems into low -income housing and importantly, we are engaged in the act of practical Treaty building with first nations peoples which involves installing hot water systems in Indigenous Housing. Rooted in strategies to demonstrate ways in which we can work our way out of climate emergency, Earthworker has worked to promote cooperatives and mutuals through unions, public social partnerships to achieve the big infrastructure projects our country and the world needs, and to link such activities globally through Social Sector Fair Trade Agreements (SSFTAs) with labour, cooperative, environment/climate movements, Superannuation/Pension Funds, national and regional Governments, Faith Communities and others to build the critical mass of action on the climate emergency. We are advocating around our work, trying to maximise the profile of the work we do and build the boarder social and solidarity sector of the economy.
36 Citizen's Initiative Referendum against forced demolitions of social housing Atelier Popular d'Urbanisme GRENOBLE, FRANCE HOUSING 2020 http://www.assoplanning.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? In 2019, over 500 residents in a social housing development in La Villeneuve, Grenoble, France held a citizens’ referendum to protest against the planned demolition of their homes. While the result of the referendum was not accepted by the city mayor, the campaign drew significant public attention to the issue of social housing demolitions and the lack of democracy in urban planning. It has also highlighted how referenda can be used to collectively press for social housing to be rehabilitated rather than destroyed and rebuilt elsewhere, at greater environmental and social cost. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS Our campaign grew out of the action of municipal groups and progressive urban planners, architects and landscapers during the 1970s. Our activities helped elect a new municipal coalition in 2014, but the decision to demolish the social housing development remained. After we had exhausted all means to reverse the decision – including demonstrations, and a 2000-strong petition – we organised a local referendum (officially permitted under a municipal law of February 2014), and held debates, door-to-door campaigning, and a vote conducted on the premises of the social housing itself. We held an intensive poster campaign in the neighbourhood in the months leading up to the referendum, shared our story on social networks and invited the press not only to report on the referendum but also to observe the voting process. This strategy resulted in the initiative being covered in multiple articles in the local and national press. We also called on experts and academics specialised in local democracy to strengthen the impact of our initiative with public authorities. Our protest against social housing demolition is part of the fight to ensure that urban planning results in cities that enhance the local ecology and the right to the city. Our experience shows the importance of creating concrete mechanisms – such as citizen referenda – for the implementation of the principles of the right to the city, as it is not only a question of proclaiming rights but also of finding the means to implement them. The campaign has aroused the interest of organisations elsewhere that may be able to draw inspiration from it, and consider setting up their own direct democracy mechanisms to protest against projects that, for example, do not respect the environment. So, while the results are relatively disappointing in the short term in Grenoble, it is likely that this initiative will lead to significant advances for direct democracy in the future.
37 Citizen participation and solidarity tariffs in remunicipalized water utility Grenoble Une Ville pour Tous – RCGE GRENOBLE, FRANCE WATER 2018 http://unevillepourtous.fr/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? In 1983, a right-wing mayor was elected in Grenoble. His administration was marked by corruption and the power he gave to large corporations in the management of public services. Elected officials and environmental activists mobilised in the 1980s and 1990s to prove that corruption was involved in many deals, and set up an alternative, municipal entity to take back and run the water utility. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS The decision to remunicipalise the water system due to corruption, lack of transparency and abusive tariffs was taken in March 2000 and implemented in 2001, with the immediate cancellation of the contract with private company Suez. Under municipal water company Régie des Eaux de Grenoble (REG) investment in infrastructure increased threefold, while maintaining the price of water at lower and steadier levels. The new public enterprise adopted an advanced form of public participation in decision-making by establishing a water users’ committee. One third of the members of the REG’s board of directors are now civil society representatives and the other two thirds are municipal councillors. A few years after Grenoble’s experience, the City of Paris decided to remunicipalise its water service. Between 2000 and 2008, this allowed users to save €20 million, mainly through improved maintenance resulting in more efficient water use. The city then launched a social water tariff policy: households for whom the cost of the service exceeds 2.5% of their annual income are reimbursed part of the amount by the CAF. In parallel to the social strategy, the goal is to maintain a pure and untreated water supply – the only case in France.
38 Dispossessed community finances and builds affordable homes Centre for Community Initiatives DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA HOUSING 2018 http://www.ccitanzania.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? When the homes of 36,000 people were demolished to expand Tanzania’s Dar Es Salaam port, Chamazi Community Based Housing Scheme galvanized displaced communities, civil society, government, donors and the private sector to build new and affordable homes for them. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS In 2006, Tanzania’s government demolished 7,351 houses in Kurasini to expand Dar Es Salaam port, leaving about 36,000 people homeless. In response, the community swung into action, securing 30 acres of land for resettlement and collecting about 24 million Tanzanian shillings (US$ 24,000) from 300 of its members to buy the land. Trained Federation women doing construction work The project also improved access to water and sanitation – as well as a borehole and solar powered water pump, sewage is now treated using a constructed wetland with recyclable water technology. A major win for the project was that it identified potential financial sources for the urban poor, who often cannot access finance from formal institutions. All of this was achieved through the setting up of the Chamazi Community Based Housing Scheme known as Muungano Housing Cooperatives, and the Tanzanian Urban Poor Fund. Together they raised a US$ 100,000 loan from Slum Dwellers International (SDI), US$ 40,000 from UK-based organization Homeless International (Reall) for water and sanitation and the solar pump for the community borehole from Temeke Municipal Council. Street-scene CCI trained the community in construction skills, enabling construction materials to be fabricated on-site by community members, who also helped build the houses. Other partners contributed expertise and professional advice on surveying and acquiring land, developing building plans and designing the houses. To date, 75 new homes have been provided. House-owner Rose Liheta seated in front of her house talking to her Neighbor.
39 Refusing to Give Up: Civil Society’s Movement against Water Privatization in Jakarta Amrta Institute, the Coalition of Jakarta Residents Opposing Water Privatization JAKARTA, INDONESIA WATER 2019, 2018 http://amrta-institute.org WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Jakarta citizens’ work to end privatization in Jakarta and enable a transition to good, publicly-run water services has resulted in the city government’s plan to re-municipalize Jakarta’s water supply. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS For some years Jakarta’s governors have been supportive of ending water privatization in the city, despite this trend being backed by national government and the Supreme Court. The city’s population has for many years combated water privatization on many fronts, with the support of experts, academics, human rights and anti-corruption activists, and lawyers. Targeted actions have ranged from op-ed articles in newspapers, investigative reports in television and radio, research studies and leaflets, to strikes, demonstrations, debates, media campaigns, rallies, petitions and legal actions. Photo credit: Amrta Institute for Water Literacy One particularly effective strategy in November 2012 involved residents, represented by Jakarta Legal Aid, filing a citizen lawsuit against water privatization – a long and successful legal challenge that played a major role in maintaining political pressure. The governor of Jakarta responded to the pressure by forming a special team named The Water Management Evaluation team, consisting of civil servants, experts, and Amrta Institute Director Nila Ardhianie. The team recommended that the Governor end water privatization using a civil settlement and set out a plan to take over water services from the private sector. Public water company PAM Jaya demanded a contract renegotiation with the private water operators, and the provincial government of Jakarta announced a plan to purchase private water operators’ shares. In 2013, the provincial house of representatives approved a budget for PAM Jaya to proceed with share repurchase. In February 2019, Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan announced that the provincial government would take over the wholesale management of water supplies in the city from private operators – a decision taken despite a Supreme Court ruling that supported the legality of water privatization in Jakarta.
40 Transforming a century-old, oil company town Richmond Progressive Alliance RICHMOND, CA, UNITED STATES ENERGY 2018 https://www.richmondprogressivealliance.net/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? The Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) has made Richmond, California, a national model after successfully organizing the community to challenge pollution by the town’s oil giant, Chevron, high rents, gun crime, gang violence and voter apathy. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS From 2006 to 2014, under Green mayor, Gayle McLaughlin – an RPA founder – the city tackled environmental hazards arising from oil, extracting higher taxes from Chevron and suing the company for damage caused by a major refinery fire in 2012. A community mobilization led by environmental justice groups and the RPA helped Richmond win $90 million in financial concessions from Chevron in return for approving a refinery modernization project to improve safety and reduce pollution. Richmond has also raised its local minimum wage and, by appointing a visionary gay police chief, greatly reduced local crime rates, including homicides, through successful community policing. In 2016, new rent control measures were brought in, which protect about 40% of all Richmond tenants. The hybrid RPA has been central to all this. As a membership organization, a coalition of community groups, and a key coordinator of grassroots education and citizen mobilization, it works on issues such as labour, immigrant rights, environmental justice, rent, police accountability, fair taxation of business, community health and environmental protection. Thanks to their year-round, non-electoral organizing work, RPA candidates now have a progressive “super-majority”. Voter alienation and estrangement from local politics has been greatly reduced and residents surveyed believe that the city has improved on all fronts. Richmond’s exemplary mix of electoral campaigning around issues and candidates, principled and persistent follow-up by elected officials, and some skilled professional city managing have made it a model for municipal action on behalf of people poorly served by local government in the past.
41 People power drives social and ecological transition Cooperation Jackson JACKSON, MS, UNITED STATES HOUSING 2019, 2018 https://cooperationjackson.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? Most people in Jackson, Mississippi live at or below the poverty line, and face chronic unemployment, poor health and an extreme wealth gap between black and white. Cooperation Jackson is helping transform the city into one that is ecologically and economically regenerative, rooted in equity, solidarity and mutual aid. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS To date the project has provided quality employment and wages to a growing number of Jacksonians, initiated a process to decommodify land, and embarked on the creation of permanently affordable housing. It has also built a broad consensus on the need for food sovereignty and laid the foundation for the development for a human rights charter and commission to respect, protect, and fulfill the basic human rights of all Jacksonians. Launched in May 2014, Cooperation Jackson has supported several progressive candidates to get elected to municipal offices; started a growing network of cooperatives; created the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust; and set up the Human Rights Institute – initiatives that are delivering quality employment, affordable housing and food sovereignty in a way that respects, protects, and fulfills the basic human rights of all Jacksonians. Underpinned by the Jackson-Kush Plan which involves building people power through people’s assemblies, developing an independent electoral force, and building a social and solidarity economy, the project’s ultimate goal includes making Jackson a zero-waste and emissions city capable of providing a range of local goods and services via community production. From community energy centres to the creation of three eco-villages, within the next five years the project will retrofit 100 homes (making them completely off-grid) and build the capacity to produce 10% of Jackson’s vegetables on urban, solar-powered farms. Cooperation Jackson is also working to combat climate change, the system of excessive resource extraction, and to change various laws in the state of Mississippi that limit cooperatives to agricultural businesses, utilities, or credit unions, and is engaged in a long-term campaign to strengthen working class organisations in the state.
42 Power Shift supports farmers with clean energy People’s Cooperative Renewable Energy Society Ltd PORT LOUIS, MAURITIUS ENERGY 2018 http://www.klrmoris.org/ WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE? The Power Shift Campaign is challenging Mauritius’ privately owned, non-renewable energy sector with a solar-powered, cooperative alternative, through which struggling farmers can improve local food production. Their actions have thwarted plans for a new coal plant, improved government transparency, and acquired land to produce solar power when they get the go-ahead. MOST OUTSTANDING RESULTS When Mauritius’ government secretly licenced Malaysian multinational CT Power to open a new coal power plant in 2013, social organisations took action, getting the plans shelved and all secret documents regarding negotiations with private sector energy companies released. Not only this, the movement pushed the government to create a National Energy Audit Commission to review Mauritius’ energy policies, and to set much higher renewable energy goals. Realising that strong alternatives to non-renewable energy needed to be put forward, the committee set up the Renewable Energy Collective (KLR) and, together with the Centre for Alternative Research and Studies (CARES), launched the Power Shift campaign. This in turn led to the establishment of the People’s Cooperative Renewable Energy Coalition. Supported by youth, trade unions, social movements, the progressive political party and the island’s sugar planters, the People’s Cooperative formed a plan to tackle the country’s energy and food supply problems in one stroke – by placing solar panels on the land of unemployed sugar planters to generate renewable energy to help produce food in nearby greenhouses. Agreements have been set up with local sugar planters who have lost their jobs to use their land for solar power when the (KLR) gets a licence. The People’s Cooperative bid to enter the energy market has been stalled by the obstruction of multinationals and oligarchs, as well as government unwillingness to permit solar energy production, yet signifiant wins have been made.