Work Packages Structure

Work Package 0 (WP0) focuses on managing and coordinating the project to achieve its goals within time and budget constraints. This involves establishing structures to ensure effective collaboration, progress monitoring, and quality assurance. Key activities include establishing the General Assembly, forming the Project Management Board, developing a Management and Quality Plan and a Data Management Plan and organising mid-term evaluations and workshops with the Advisory Board.

Work Package 1 (WP1) focuses on building the conceptual framework to explore the intersection of sustainability transitions, populism, and democratic crises. The main objectives are defining democracy and climate urgency relations, analysing populism and crisis narratives and developing a typology of contestation.

Work Package 2 (WP2) focuses on testing and refining the typology of political protest and opposition developed in WP1 through empirical studies and pilot analyses. It aims to evaluate action repertoires and conceptions of crisis and urgency in sustainability transitions and map the variation in contestation across different contexts. This includes operationalising the typology of political protests against sustainability transitions, developing the pilot studies and proceeding with evaluation and mapping.

Work Package 3 (WP3) examines the root causes of protests and contestations surrounding sustainability transitions and their consequences on policies and liberal-democratic practices through national case studies. The examination will take place through the development of a case study protocol, which will be applied when conducting national case studies and a comparative analysis across these case studies.

Work Package 4 (WP4) explores innovative engagement practices and identifies new sites for democratic renewal, addressing criticisms of representative democracy and mitigating polarising protests by reviewing global initiatives involving children and youth in environmental politics to map existing practices and facilitate cross-country learning and investigating novel democratic practices, such as citizen councils, arts-based mobilisations, and dialogue-based interventions, to foster engagement and rebuild trust in polarised societies.

Work Package 5 (WP5) focuses on synthesising project findings into actionable policy recommendations and engaging stakeholders to refine these strategies through consultations. This will be implemented in the following steps, starting with collation and cross-referencing, followed by applying a Just Transitions Lens and policy lab evaluation, which will lead to the finalisation of the policy recommendations.

Work Package 6 (WP6) ensures the effective dissemination of project results and engagement with stakeholders through communication strategies and a sustainability plan. Key activities of WP6 include the development of a communication and Dissemination Plan and a Sustainability Plan, as well as the production of policy briefs and the participation and hosting of relevant events.