Capacity Building for Ambitious Long-Term Strategies

Goal

The project intends to improve the quality of long-term strategies (LTS) for decarbonisation in the Visegrad 4+2 countries (Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia as well as Romania and Bulgaria) by increasing the capacity of Civil Society Organisations (CSO) to engage more effectively with national long-term strategy processes.

Project

The project focusses on a multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral exchange on positive outcomes of the ambitious long-term climate strategies. This exchange could offer a starting point for debate in other countries, and also in the region as a whole, thereby creating synergies and showing new opportunities for developing strategies for the transformation towards zero-carbon economies and societies.

The project envisages a three-step theory of change to increase the capacity of CSOs to operate within the national context. First, it encourages CSOs to engage more effectively with long-term strategy processes, second it aims to improve the consistency of national LTS with EU LTS and the Paris Agreement, and third it wants to foster exchange with other stakeholders on the topic. The three core countries targeted by the project will be Poland, Czechia and Hungary.
It includes the following measures: the creation of the V4+2 LTS platform, a subsequent mailing list subscription for its members, strategy webseminars, calls and meetings, as well as four regional workshops to equip organizations with the tools to address the long-term strategies. Following, the CSOs in the three core countries will be equipped with the tools and capacities to assess their national LTS against the EU LTS and Paris Agreement goals. Furthermore, the CSOs will prepare a regional alignment report.

Background

Most of the V4+2 Member are struggling with the concept of fully decarbonising their economy as it is perceived as increasing economic and social cost. This has led to resistance against the EU’s vision of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. However, the achievement of the temperature objectives of the Paris Agreement requires the implementation of decarbonisation in Visegrad 4+2. While the debate around decarbonisation mostly focuses on the energy sector, it is also crucial to highlight the decarbonisation of other sectors (industry, agriculture or transport).

All in all, there is a need for inclusive and comprehensive transition visions and narratives that highlight the co-benefits of climate-neutral transition for the society to foster this development and build broad societal support for the zero-emissions transition. A narrative putting forward these positive co-benefits needs to be developed in each country by national actors that are best placed to analyse the national circumstances.