CReating Innovative Sustainability Pathways (CRISP)

Background of CRISP

Efforts towards sustainable consumption and production must involve long-term, profound and deep change. To support this, there are a diversity of EU and national targets and policies in place and in preparation. However, without clear visions of low carbon, sustainable lifestyles, it is difficult to design effective pathways for change. Such visions should be developed in close collaboration with those who will live in these futures. This is an ethical imperative and a better way to develop visions of such futures that are more acceptable, more realistic and thus more likely to be achieved. However, they also need to be implemented and calibrated against the backdrop of current and foreseeable regulation and policy.

Aims and objectives of CRISP

The project is designed to deliver “bottom-up approaches which address the question of how to overcome the gap between awareness of the issues at stake and the concrete engagement in sustainability driven action, as individuals and as a society”. It aims to develop viable visions of low-carbon sustainable living in 2030 and to provide transition pathways and practical guidance on how to achieve these.

The Objectives are:

• To provide a state-of-the-art review of barriers, drivers and synergies towards sustainable development from a policy and conceptual perspective.
• To develop a suitable assessment methodology to review the efficacy and success of practical sustainability initiatives
• To review initiatives towards sustainable developments with a diversity of policy contexts, actors, agents interests.
• To develop a set of policy and practice-relevant lessons that can be learned from the conceptual and practice reviews.
• To develop end-vision scenarios towards sustainable development.
• To backcast these scenarios to develop meaningful trajectories for stakeholders.
• To evaluate and compare the trajectories for the various scenarios.
• To provide clear and effective guidelines on how different future scenarios can be attained; and
• To manage the project effectively, and to disseminate results to a wider audience.

The methodology of CRISP engages a range of stakeholders – especially 17-19 year youngsters – in a series of scenario/envisioning and backcasting workshops in the six participating countries (UK, Norway, the Netherlands, Greece, Lithuania and Hungary). Based on a review of existing projects across the EU, this will allow a clear understanding of ‘where we want to be, and how do we get there’.

Partners

Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary

Surrey University - Centre for Environmental Strategy
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/ces/

University of Groningen (RUG)
http://www.rug.nl/staff/e.m.steg/

National Institute for Consumer Research (SIFO)
http://www.sifo.no/
http://www.sifo.no/page/preview/preview/10037/48272.html

Kaunas University of Technology (KTU)
http://www.apini.lt/?lang=en

Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO)
http://www.tno.nl/

Technological Educational Institute of Piraeus
http://www.sealab.gr/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=6193161