Green Rural Deal

Enabling residents of rural Greece, Kosovo, and Serbia to co-create projects, tools, and instruments that support the sustainable development of their home regions.
Municipalities in Europe’s rural regions face different challenges than urban regions with regards to the sustainability transformation: The shrinking and ageing of their population, a shortage of skilled workers and, simultaneously, a high level of unemployment. In these situations, the trade-off between creating jobs and saving the climate seems all too real. Green Rural Deal supports rural municipalities in building up their transformative capacities and developing suitable solutions for a zero-carbon economy.
Rural view in Kamenica, Kosovo © Blerim Demolli
A sustainability strategy requires reliable data. Therefore, the project supports local stakeholders in Western Macedonia (Greece), Kamenica (Kosovo) and Priboj (Serbia) in gathering and assessing key socioeconomic data relevant for a transition to a zero-carbon economy. As a next step, the same regional stakeholders co-create project ideas and concepts in a series of events and formats, including one study trip to a rural region in Germany. Furthermore, the partners develop tools which help to align regional economic development strategies with climate targets. Based on learnings from the three target regions, the project develops recommendations for other rural regions in similar processes. Finally, the partners develop policy briefings in order to raise awareness for rural regions among higher levels of government.
View on Priboj, Serbia © RES Foundation
Updated: April 2021
Countries: Germany, Greece, Kosovo, Serbia
Project duration: 10/20 - 12/22
Funding: 574,738 €
Target groups: Cities, towns and municipalities, Regional governments
Implementing organisation: Wuppertal Institute for Climate Environment and Energy
Partners: Balkan Green Foundation (BGF), Germanwatch e.V., Regional association of local government of Western Macedonia, RES Foundation
Mr Timon Wehnert
Organisation:
Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie gGmbH
Address:
Döppersberg 1
42103 Wuppertal
Germany
Email:
timon.wehnert∂wupperinst.org
This project is part of the European Climate Initiative (EUKI). EUKI is a project financing instrument by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). The EUKI call for project ideas is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. It is the overarching goal of the EUKI to foster climate cooperation within the European Union (EU) in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
European Climate Initiative (EUKI)
Potsdamer Platz 10
10785 Berlin – Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)30 338424 570
info∂euki.de