HICS

Funding: StartClim, Universität für Bodenkultur
Amount of Funding: € 19.753 (RCE: € 9.965)
Duration: 10/2020 - 07/2021
Partners: Medical University Vienna
Contact: Dr. Andreas Exner

Description:
Climate policy measures encounter several interwoven resistances. These include economic interests, short-term political horizons for action, habits of everyday life, dependence on fossil fuels, and a lack of concepts of a society that consumes significantly fewer resources. Positive images of the future play a key role here. This is because they condense desires, life goals, moral orientations and political concepts of order that give meaning to actions, describe development directions and open up possibilities. However, serious climate policy has so far mostly been associated with renunciation and restriction of one's own way of life. The structural obstacles to a socio-ecological transformation are often emphasized more than the potential gains in prosperity. In this way, fears are stirred up rather than creativity and drive.
In contrast, new, strategically useful, evidence-based societal guiding principles are needed. They should make clear what individual and social benefits a climate-friendly society offers. Therefore, in this StartClim2020 project, the RCE Graz-Styria, together with the Center for Public Health of the Medical University of Vienna, wants to record the essential dimensions of future visions of a climate-friendly society, quantitatively assess them in terms of their health impacts, and use them to develop transformation scenarios together with stakeholders. This will provide the scientific basis for a follow-up project on the health aspects of a socio-ecological transformation towards a climate-friendly society.