What’s the Action Town Project about?

This project looks into how CSOs can provide new insights for research in sustainable consumption and production with the goal of reaching absolute decoupling of economic growth from resource use.

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Why Action Town?

Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) offer many exciting challenges for the present and the future. To make SCP happen, both research and action are needed. In this sense, civil society organisations (CSOs) and research institutions play important roles:

- CSOs have the unique capability to bring a variety of actors together and convince them to take action for more transformational types of change.

- Research can give important insights to different stakeholders and increase their SCP knowledge base.

The “Action Town – Research and Action for SCP”* project focusses on enhancing the effectiveness of CSO activities promoting more sustainable consumption and production patterns, and on making better use of the unique contribution that CSOs working in the field of SCP can give to the sustainability research agenda.

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What do we offer?

Preparing guidelines for CSOs

Three guidelines on policy instruments, assessment tools and indicators for SCP suggest ways for CSOs to foster SCP by giving practical examples and proposals on how to take action.

You can download the guidelines for free.

Identifying gaps in CSOs’ work on SCP

A survey gives insights on SCP strategies used by CSOs, their impacts and gaps, as well as ideas on how to become more effective.

You can download the the survey report for free.

Selecting new CSO partners

Four selected European CSOs become project partners and are provided with know-how on SCP in support workshops.

Click here to find out more about the Action Town support workshops.

Discussing new CSO strategies

Action Town discusses with a select group of leading thinkers how to provide better knowledge and capacity for more effective CSO strategies.

Read more about the Action Town Roadmap Workshop.

Implementing small SCP projects

To demonstrate how to increase the efficiency of activities and how research can support CSOs in their work, the new CSO partners conduct exploratory actions on SCP, assisted by the Action Town research partners.

Creating a roadmap for new strategies

A roadmap document prepared in cooperation with other European actors aims to influence research agendas and induce funding programmes to support more effective CSO and NGO strategies.

Read more about the Action Town Roadmap Workshop.

Establish National Focal Points

The four new CSO partners act as National Focal Points on SCP within their countries.

Organising a “Researchers-meet-CSOs” event

A conference in early 2011 presents the results of the project such as the CSOs’ exploratory actions and the launch of the Action Town Roadmap.

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What results do we expect?

Through the occasions created for researchers and CSOs to directly meet, exchange ideas and discuss collaboration options, the project is expected to create partnerships between them, promoting long-term opportunities for further development of collaborative relationships.

For CSOs the project will contribute to a better knowledge on how to use research outcomes. For researchers it will improve opportunities to understand the research needs of organised civil society in view of their policy and advocacy goals.

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Who are the Action Town project partners?

To find out click here.

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How to learn more about Action Town* and how to engage with us?

To find out click here and have a look at the right column of the page.

Download the Action Town flyer here.

*The Action Town is an FP7 project and kindly funded by the European Commission. Its official name is CSOContribution2SCP.