Work packages ACT
Each work package within the ACT programme focuses on a specific research question and objective. The exact details are determined for each city and neighbourhood. Concrete steps have already been taken for a number of packages.
Work package 1: Definitions and Concepts
The aim of this work package is to develop a practical definition of climate justice based on sessions with groups of stakeholders (urban, national and global). The result is a handbook with concrete tools that climate professionals can use to apply justice in their work. Using inspiring case studies, we show how an abstract concept translates into practice.
What does this concept mean in the context of a neighbourhood or district? We also examine which operational frameworks are feasible and usable for effectively implementing climate justice.
Update
In the spring of 2025, a vision document on climate justice was delivered. An assessment framework was also developed for policy officers and climate professionals to provide guidance on applying climate justice in their daily work.
Work package 2: Barriers
This work package examines the question of which existing legal, administrative and financial barriers hinder the acceleration of just climate transitions in neighbourhoods. How can a shared understanding of these barriers and (creative) insights help to address them?
Work package 3: System complexity
How can we ensure that health and well-being considerations are adequately taken into account in climate transitions? This work package identifies important system interactions and complexities so that just climate transitions can be linked to health and well-being in neighbourhoods. To this end, it also examines how stakeholder- and data-driven system insights could be integrated into pathways for just climate transition at the neighbourhood level.
Work package 4: Participatory approaches
The central question within this work package is how fair and inclusive participatory processes can accelerate just climate transitions in neighbourhoods. And how you can create dynamic paths for this in co-creation.
Work package 5: Best Practices for Sustainable Consumption
This work package collects existing best practices in sustainable consumption (of products and services, such as mobility, energy, food) in neighbourhoods in Maastricht, Nijmegen, Eindhoven, and Rotterdam. Those involved will then work with the neighbourhoods to develop concrete measures to make consumption and mobility more sustainable and equitable. How can we scale up existing practices such as reduced consumption, second-hand goods, car sharing and local repairs, and develop new initiatives where necessary?
Update
Various neighbourhood initiatives in Eindhoven and Maastricht have now been interviewed (e.g. repair cafés, energy cooperatives and car or goods sharing initiatives).
A PhD candidate has also been accepted who, starting in September 2025, will conduct in-depth research through Utrecht University and contribute to setting up living labs in the neighbourhood. These living labs should lead to the development of ways to accelerate a fair climate transition at the neighbourhood level.
Finally, a literature review on the overconsumption of goods and mobility has been completed, which also looked at the effectiveness of policy measures to combat this overconsumption.
The conversations with the initiatives in the neighbourhoods can be read and listened to in the podcast “The sustainable neighbourhood” (in Dutch).
Work package 6: Learning by doing & Coordination
This work package investigates how transdisciplinary learning processes can be effectively facilitated to enable transformation at neighbourhood level. It also looks at how this can be incorporated into a generic learning process so that it can also be used in other regions and neighbourhoods in the future.
Update
In the spring of 2025, the first “Learning Space” took place, in which the most pressing questions surrounding fair climate transition in the four cities were identified by local stakeholders.
Work package 7: Transformative Leadership
This work package identifies the skills that sustainability professionals and informal climate leaders need to work on equitable climate transitions in neighbourhoods, and the pitfalls and bottlenecks that can be identified. How can you offer the necessary competencies in both tertiary education and training (on the job/in the neighbourhood) so that current and future sustainability professionals can learn and develop (in)formal climate leadership?