Testimonials

“Achieving a just transition, and reaching ambitious climate and sustainability goals, requires a much greater engagement of socially vulnerable and marginalised groups. The ACCTING project has made a very important contribution to better understanding how this can be achieved. The project underlines the pivotal role of local, community-led initiatives (CLIs) in providing accessible and supportive spaces that nurture both individual and collective behaviour change. However, it also finds that few policies currently recognise this potential of CLIs to advance social justice and environmental transition. As a result, they invariably struggle with economic, regulatory and structural barriers that greatly limit their scalability and impact. This is consistent with the findings of ECOLISE across multiple other projects and, therefore, ECOLISE fully supports the recommendations of ACCTING in calling for policies that recognise and support the critical role of CLIs in empowering and enabling individual and collective action for a sustainable and just transition.”

“Participating in the EU ACCTING project has significantly deepened my understanding of how to meaningfully include underrepresented groups in sustainability research and practice. The project has provided me with both the theoretical frameworks and practical tools to better integrate equity considerations into my work. Through ACCTING’s research outputs and collaborative exchanges, I’ve gained valuable insights into the systemic barriers faced by minoritised communities in the context of sustainability transformations.

I have been directly influenced to adopt ACCTING’s innovative project design into my forthcoming projects. ACCTING has fruitfully combined three strands of learning: case mapping of inclusive bottom-up initiatives, action-research pilot cases, and multi-stakeholder ‘open studios’ that also weave in policy perspectives. This has enabled the production of findings that are comprehensive, rigorous and genuinely inclusive.

In summary, ACCTING has equipped me with the language, evidence, and confidence to push for more equitable sustainability outcomes. I am grateful to have been part of the Advisory Board, on a project that not has not only advanced academic knowledge but has also actively worked to transform the structures that perpetuate exclusion in sustainability transformations.”