QUICK READS

Quick Reads are short overviews of key NetZeroCities concepts providing essential information in a practical and visual way. More comprehensive resources and additional information will be available in the knowledge repository.

SOCIAL INNOVATION FOR CLIMATE-NEUTRALITY

Social innovation addresses the challenge of achieving climate-neutrality with a collaborative, bottom-up, holistic, and people-centred approach. In doing so it effectively accelerates the pace of change by onboarding diverse communities to the mission. It uses prototyping and quick experimentation to create new products or services, or to implement innovative business models that improve community wellbeing and promote behavioural change by responding to local needs and acting within a cultural context. This approach complements technical innovation, ensuring economic development and overall wellbeing while reinforcing the co-benefits of climate mitigation like public health, job creation, and public budget savings.

Watch this video to learn more: Creating an Ecosystem for Change: The NetZeroCities Approach to Social Innovation (video).

For further information and resources, visit the page on the portal dedicated to Social Innovation.

Why invest in it: Key Principles for Cities

Collaborative Approach for People-Centred Solutions

Engaging diverse local actors, social innovation helps cities articulate and address collective needs, accelerating emission reductions with practical solutions and cultivating shared buy-in.

Address Unmet Social Needs

Social innovation provides new ideas and solutions for people to adopt climate-neutral lifestyles, benefiting both people and the planet.

Activate an Ecosystem

Empowering diverse local actors, cities create platforms for climate transformation, fostering inclusive, adaptive, and resilient local ecosystems.

What this looks like in practice: Inspiration (Case Studies)

City Experiment Fund

Five cities from across South-Eastern European and Central Asian region embarked on an exploration of a new approach to problem solving rooted in systems thinking. The city councils began designing systems thinking portfolios for urban transformation with the support of UNDP Europe and Central Asia.

Pentahelix

Aimed to help regional authorities develop, finance, implement, and improve sustainable energy and climate action plans (SECAPs) to meet national and European climate goals. The project created and tested a new multi-governance planning approach, involving key stakeholders: public authorities, industry, academia, NGOs, and citizens.

SONNET – The Bristol City Lab

Bristol City Council explored crowdfunding through a Community Municipal Bond (CMB) to raise capital for installing energy efficiency measures in local community buildings. Collaborating with the Bristol Energy Network, they conducted technical surveys and energy audits to evaluate the needed energy efficiency improvements.

Paris 15-min City

15-Minute City is an urban plan established by the city of Paris whose goal is to make most daily necessities accomplishable by either walking or cycling from residents' homes in a maximum of 15 minutes.

How to get started

Actionable Pathways of Social Innovation

Prepare

Build capacity and skills in the public administration and transition teams, creating an action plan and securing funding.

Act

Engage stakeholders with training and create policies, resources, and environments for collaboration.

Accelerate

Incubate ideas, provide further training, and co-create initiatives for systemic change towards climate neutrality.

Methods to Implement Social Innovation

Phase 1: Analyse the Context

Detailed analysis of the environment, stakeholders, and existing systems to identify opportunities and challenges.

Phase 2: Reframe the Problem

Shift perspectives to better understand underlying issues, using tools like empathy maps and scenario-building.

Phase 3: Envision Alternatives

Generate and evaluate potential solutions, prioritizing ideas based on impact and feasibility.

Phase 4: Prototype & Experiment

Create and test prototypes, iterating based on feedback to develop concrete solutions ready for implementation.

Phase 5: Evaluate and Scale

Assess the effectiveness of solutions and plan for expansion, ensuring lasting, positive change in cities.

Learn more about the methods used in each of these phases at this page dedicated to social innovation cases and methods or join the group on Social Innovation.

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