The European Commission (EC) has announced a call for applications for the Behavioural, social and cultural change for the Green Deal.

All areas of the European Green Deal, from climate action to zero pollution, require considerable changes in societal practices and in the behaviour of individuals, communities, and public and private organisations. These changes concern, for example, mobility behaviour, minimising traffic-related emissions and energy/resource consumption, protecting or restoring biodiversity, etc. including changes achieved through collective and participatory processes or a sense of environmental citizenship and climate justice.

The European Green Deal requires substantial behavioural change at both individual and collective levels. Projects under this topic will enable such change through implementation research on the behavioural change of individuals, private corporations and/or the public sector across the EU. Consortia should choose a basket of qualitative and quantitative indicators to measure the impact of their work and are encouraged to make use of MoRRI indicators.

Expected Impact

Successful projects are expected to contribute to specific impacts, including:

• structurally enhanced research and innovation capacities in this area, through structured transdisciplinary expertise, research and practice networks of the highest ethical and methodological standards across Europe;
• more effective and inclusive action on the social and behavioural aspects of the European Green Deal, by achieving a more nuanced view of mindset, incentive structures and social and behavioural change mechanisms, including enabling as well as inhibiting factors for various groups and communities, through the lens of transdisciplinary research that integrates historical, cultural, societal, economic and psychological perspectives;
• behavioural change and long-term commitment, trust, social acceptance and buy-in from people, communities and organisations, through effective new strategies to induce this, including innovative recommendations and incentives that consider differences between EU regions and social groups e.g. in terms of urgency perceptions;
• improved management, inter alia, of the uncertainty derived from climate change through bottom-up approaches;
• greater societal resilience against climate change and environmental crises, and as well as contributions to effective just transitions;
• changed behaviour at both individual and collective levels, among citizens, communities, businesses, workplace, decision makers and institutional actors;
• in the longer-term, systemic change at the level of political and economic structures, culture and society and contribution to one or several of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Funding Information

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 to 5 million would allow the specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Eligibility Criteria

• A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon 2020 projects.
• To be considered admissible, a proposal/application must be:
  • submitted in the electronic submission system before the deadline given in the call conditions or rules of contest;
  • readable, accessible and printable;
  • complete and include the requested administrative data, the proposal description, and any obligatory supporting documents specified in the call/contest;
  • include a draft plan for the exploitation and dissemination of the results, unless otherwise specified in the call conditions. The draft plan is not required for proposals at the first stage of two-stage procedures.

For more information, visit European Commission.