October 2020 – December 2022
EUROPEAN CLIMATE INITIATIVE (“EUKI”)
Municipalities in rural regions in Europe often face different challenges than urban regions with regards to the sustainability transformation: The shrinking and ageing of their population, a shortage of skilled workers and, simultaneously, a high level of unemployment. In these situations, the trade-off between creating jobs and saving the climate seems all too real.
GreenRuralDeal will support municipalities in regions to build up their transformative capacities and develop suitable solutions for a zero-carbon economy. GreenRuralDeal will engage with local stakeholders in Western Macedonia (Greece), Kamenica (Kosovo*) and Priboj (Serbia) in a structured conversation and offer a variety of capacity building opportunities:
A sustainability strategy needs to build on reliable data down to regional and local level. The project will support the gathering and assessment of key socio-economic relevant for a transition to a zero-carbon economy, based on knowledge gaps identified collectively with regional stakeholders.
Secondly, GreenRuralDeal will invite the same regional stakeholders to co-create project ideas and concepts in a series of events and formats including one study trip to a rural region in Germany.
Thirdly, the partners will develop tools which help to align regional economic development strategies with climate targets. Based on learnings how to ensure the success of projects and strategies in the three target regions, recommendations for other rural regions in similar processes will be developed.
Finally, the partners will condense key results into policy briefings targeting higher levels of government in an attempt to raise awareness for the needs of rural regions.
The project is part of the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).
