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Project start: 1 January 2011
Project end: 31 December 2012
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Focus on daily lives of citizens and their contribution to sustainability: SPREAD at GLOCAL 2011 conference
The SPREAD Sustainable Lifestyles 2050 project was represented at the Glocal 2011 ‘Think Global, Act Local’ conference held at Cascais near Lisbon on 29/30 November 2011. This included both a presentation to the plenary, and the realisation of a workshop with representatives of Portuguese local communities and NGOS to develop visions and policy recommendations for sustainable ways of living in 2050.
Pictured outside the conference were (left-right) Joao Seiras Professor of Social Science Lisbon, PJ Rudden Director of European Green Capital Secretariat, Livia Tirone CEO Tirone Nunes Architects Lisbon, Paula Cabral Cascais City Architect (Conference Chair), Chantal Vanoeteren Urban Planner University of Brussels, Nora Brüggemann SPREAD Project Coordinator at CSCP, and Mario Alves Transport Engineer at University of Lisbon
In the plenary session “Models and Networks on Local Sustainability” Nora Brüggemann, SPREAD project coordinator, highlighted the need to focus on the daily lives of citizens, on their contribution to sustainability, and outlined the current state and first results of the SPREAD project. Together with the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia, SPREAD also conducted a workshop with 33 participants to develop visions for sustainable ways of living in 2050 and recommendations for policies that could help to achieve these.
The different visions developed included:
Food and health
- Reducing child obesity to 20%
- Increasing the availability of organic products in supermarkets by 20%
- 80% of public facilities to be served by cycling paths
- Compulsory gym education classes
- Everyone does a 1 hour/day physical activity
- Portugal should become sustainable in its food production chain
Education
- Schools should become real participants in local communities (this concept is already used politically but should be more than “nice words”). This would include increasing the school’s responsibility, creating working groups on sustainability as well as a curricula revision including trans-disciplinary and trans-generational programmes
Energy and buildings
- 90% energy to come from renewable sources
- All construction should be sustainable
- Most energy produced locally (decentralized production)
The GLOCAL Conference was held in the town of Cascais at the coast north of Lisbon. The aim of the conference was to explore the principles, models and realities of local sustainability policies. The conference was opened by the Portuguese Secretary of State for Environment Dr Pedro Afonso de Paulo. The Speakers were a combination of engineers, architects, town planners and social scientists drawn from municipalities, business and academia. For further information from the conference and for the presentations click here.
