Backcasting is a method that starts with a desired future outcome and works backwards to determine the steps needed to achieve it. It helps bridge the gap between the present and the desired future, enabling individuals and organizations to develop strategies for achieving their goals.
The Guide to Digital Civic Engagement draws on extensive research on students’ digital civic engagement. It focuses on the conceptualisation of digital civic engagement in theoretical and empirical research and explores how digital civic engagement can be integrated into different levels of higher education (policy, teaching, and learning).
Societies' harmful production and consumption patterns impact the environment and well-being. The EU-funded INHERIT project aims to promote sustainable, healthier living in areas like housing, transportation, and consumption. It seeks a 'triple-win' of better health, reduced environmental impact, and improved social equity by influencing policies for healthier and more sustainable societies. The project identifies connections between behaviors, sustainability, health, and fairness. Sedentary jobs, processed foods, stress, and social isolation affect health, contributing to issues like heart disease and mental health problems. The project highlights how lifestyle choices in transport, energy, and diet impact both local and global health and the environment.
The Sustainable Development Methodology helps policymakers and other users assess multiple development and climate impacts across the environmental, social and economic dimensions. These may include air pollution reduction, job creation, improved health, access to energy, poverty reduction, protection of ecosystems, and more. The methodology can help advance policies that contribute to multiple Sustainable Development Goals and priorities, build support for climate actions by assessing impacts most relevant to national audiences, and inform policy design and implementation to maximize positive impacts and avoid or address unintended impacts. The methodology is applicable to all sectors, policies and actions.
Europe is increasingly facing dire urban challenges ranging from the global health crisis and the rise of digitalization to societal inequalities, demographic changes, climate change and environmental degradation. While these complex, multi-faceted challenges fall under different policy levels and sectors, cities serve as the main drivers of delivering innovative solutions for sustainable development in Europe. In this aim, the Urban Innovative Actions was the initiative set up to provide direct support for cities to experiment and test new solutions addressing pressing urban challenges.
The paper faces socio-ecological crises and fails to meet the basic needs of everyone in society whilst living within planetary boundaries. These interconnected problems are complex and require urgent transdisciplinary efforts informed by theories of change.
