article • 19 October 2022

The Geneva Citizen Action Lab 2nd event was a great success

What will life in our communities be like in 2035?

 

Date and Place: 19 October 2022 

Our second event in the DIALOGUES citizen forum welcomed more than thirty residents to Restaurant le Tilleul, Meinier for a 2-hour discussion centred on what it means to live well in an energy transition. The evening was structured as a participatory workshop designed by the team members of the  WEFEL : Wellbeing, Energy Futures and Everyday life project.

How the workshop works and what took place

After a warm welcome by Madame Coranda Pierrehumbert, Mayor’s office, Meinier Commune, we launched directly into the workshop purpose: to discuss whether and in what way an energy transition represents the good life, and what needs to be changed today so that we can achieve sustainable well-being for all in the future.

The workshop introduces five cartoon characters to help participants imagine living a good life in Geneva in 2035, representing energy efficiency, sufficiency and renewable energy measures. Each character explores a particular domain relevant to everyday life consumption, such as living and working, preparing a meal, or getting around.

Meet the Personas from 2035
Meet the Personas from 2035. Image credit: WEFEL Project, 2021

We often talk about changes in energy consumption and production in terms of what we must give up or lose. This can be unhelpful and sometimes even counterproductive. The premise of this workshop is that if we take human needs as our starting point, we can come up with nuanced and positive thinking about the role of energy as a means to meet those needs. We can explore what needs might not be met, regardless of the energy we use. For example, information and communication technologies can hinder our ability to have meaningful relationships, even though they help us connect virtually with people around the world. How can we aim to meet more needs, such as the need for social connection, while using energy more efficiently or less? The changes required to make energy transitions could allow us to create positive personal and community outcomes.

The workshop format allowed participants to imagine what energy citizenship could look like as part of a good life while learning more about the barriers and incentives to developing new energy practices.

Residents in full discussion during the workshop. Photo credit: DIALOGUES Geneva team 2022

Our participating residents created 6 small groups to discuss these ideas, with one cartoon character discussed per table. First, they introduced themselves, and then read a comic together. Then they discussed the comic characters and whether or not they thought the personas represented a good life where needs were being met in their particular experience of the energy transition. After a break for the aperitif, the groups came back together again to discuss what changes they think are needed for an energy transition to take place that accounts for the normative aim of living well. Finally, the groups shared their thoughts on what collective changes could ensure well-being in the energy transition in an open discussion altogether.

Results: What does “living well” in the energy transition mean for participants?

Each table developed its own narrative based on its comic characters and themes, personal experiences, opinions and understanding of the exercise. Across the tables, the following elements seem to be important to ensuring well-being in the energy transition in Meinier and surrounding communes:

  • Making the choice to change is empowering. If we make the choice to change our habits and the way we live, then the losses or sacrifices come from a personal choice about what we value and how to live in accordance with those values.
  • Time is an important resource. Having time to meet our needs for health, family, community, and participation in community life as part of new practices for a less carbon and energy-intensive society.
  • Receiving help to change is important because the changes are bigger than any individual can be expected to do by themselves. Some deep changes in society are needed to support individual and local-level changes: for example, alternative employment options and different expectations regarding working hours; designing liveable and sustainable local communities; deploying taxes and laws that help everyone transition, including large enterprises.
  • Pooling spaces or resources is one way that would support us in a good quality of life while reducing resources and energy consumption. Can we reduce our living space requirements while sharing gardens, guest room facilities and cars in multi-household residences and private transport options?
  • Stimulating a rich and rewarding local life, where people always have the choice to meet a need elsewhere but would be able to meet these locally more regularly.

What are some tensions raised?

Securing human needs and energy transitioning are complex subjects. It would be untrue and unfair to suggest that agreements are easy to reach and that no trade-offs exist. Local residents came across many tensions in their discussions. Other tensions were heard when listening across all discussions. Three of the most striking were:

  • If we were just talking about the energy transition and not well-being, it would be easier. Talking about well-being at the same time makes the discussion more nuanced and complex. “Je suis en plein contradiction”
  • How do we balance personal freedom against the needs of the community? How do we balance self-determination with the need to make a paradigm shift in energy production and consumption? What is freedom really? Being able to choose is better than having changes imposed, but how to make sure that everyone is making the necessary changes?
  • Good solutions can also bring about undesirable consequences. We need to work on proximity and localisation, including access to work opportunities and services in our villages; but badly designed urban densification can bring about its own problems too.

Key themes for pathways to energy citizenship emerging

The European DIALOGUES project in Geneva aims to help residents to define what energy citizenship means in the communes of Vandœuvres, Collonge-Bellerive, Choulex and Meinier over the next 5 months. Our first topic of discussion in September was the current challenges and opportunities for citizen participation in the energy transition in Geneva: The main themes that came out were the importance of finding time, the need to enforce social cohesion, and the significance of solidarity, which includes respect for diversity. This second event gave insight into what energy citizenship means in terms of meeting our needs and the needs of others.

We also heard views about how to realise these new energy practices. Participants from Event #1 focused on the desire for social connection and collaboration between all actors, both political and non-political, while participants from Event #2 placed a strong emphasis on structural changes and changes at bigger scales rather than individuals making practice changes. The framing of the workshop may have contributed to this, but participants also seemed convinced of the need for changes at the level of societies and economies being the key to widespread change.

Some preliminary suggestions for changes needed before energy transitions can be fully realised included:

  • Changing how we participate in the economy through employment models that take up so much of a person’s time; alternative education and training options should be made available.
  • Changing the economic paradigm at the level of business and consumption models, including establishing fair pricing and favouring local production and consumption.
  • Adjusting tax regimes to favour and support new energy production and consumption models to encourage bigger actors to play their part, including incentivising forms of diverse and local agricultural production that are less energy intensive.
  • Adjusting land ownership regimes, or at least access rules, so that local food production can become a realistic action for more people to participate in.
  • Thinking at the level of sustainable neighbourhood design: talking first about proximity rather than mobility; develop local spaces and networks for accessing services, employment, culture and social life.
  • Making public transport free, frequent and reliable.
  • Creating vibrant, interactive local places that support the development of knowledge, sharing systems, social links and the extra personal time needed that aid energy transitions.
  • Creating cooperative housing that would help with resource pooling and create new opportunities for increasing citizen participation in community life.
  • Integrating residents into local government projects on sustainable development and social cohesion, through citizen councils, public co-budgeting procedures and compensating citizens who give their time and energy to public good projects.

Our next event will take place on 22 November 2022, 19h-20h30 in Choulex

The third of four discussion events will take place towards the end of November. Our topic is highly relevant to the winter ahead, as well as the deeper changes that are starting to take place in our energy systems here in Switzerland: Energy in our buildings: chosen or imposed sufficiency?

For more information, have a look here.

Would you like to participate? Write to us at projetdialogues@unige.ch

authors

Dr. Louise Gallagher

Département de sociologie | Université de Genève

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