Why our community, Climate Commons?
To be successful, climate education must not be ‘sanctuarised’. Of course, public authorities have a duty to develop it in a consistent and coherent way in schools, colleges and universities. But if it remains confined to these formal institutions, its impact will inevitably be limited. The aim of the Climate Commons – a community of educational practices coordinated by REPER21 (Romania), Canopée (France) and A SUD (Italy) – is to disseminate climate education across the various European territories, in the form of various free educational commons, co-created and co-experienced by citizens, who in this way become the actors of their own knowledge, skills and attitudes in relation to the climate.
Climate Commons’ strategy is to prioritize the development of innovative experiments of climate education in Third-Places, for the benefit of their “regulars” of all ages and backgrounds, who visit them voluntarily. We are targeting Third-Places because they are forward-looking organizational models, deeply rooted in local life and designed to encourage joint projects, solidarity and innovation.
The ‘Third-Place’ is an informal social space, rooted in everyday life, open to all and characterized by free expression and the circulation of ideas. People spontaneously decide to go there, not because they have to, but because they want to. From a sociological point of view, the Third-Place differs from two other essential environments for citizens: their home (‘First-Place’) and their workplace (‘Second-Place’).
You’re not a Third-Place by default, you have to develop the Third-Place! You can create a Third-Place in a bistro, a park, a public library, a museum, a beach, a neighborhood market, a retirement club or a hairdressing salon. Any space in your urban or rural area that is freely used by citizens can become a Third-Place, provided that it is a place where they can debate ideas, share learnings, build social links, and find motivations and aspirations for a better world.
Thanks to their features, Third-Places can act as catalysts for genuine ‘popular education’ about climate change, firmly rooted in the local area. Third-Places are dynamic social environments that have the capacity to facilitate not only ‘climate awareness’, based on the acquisition of knowledge, but also ‘climate citizenship’, because by their nature Third-Places give rise to the development of attitudes and skills.
The Third-Place has the characteristics of a ‘common’ because it is not defined by private property (like one person’s bistro) or public property (like one State’s museum). What counts are the social ties built up between its users. A Third-Place de facto ‘belongs’ to its regulars as much as to its owners.
Because Third-Places are open and informal places for people to socialize, they represent an essential mechanism for the functioning and vitality of a democracy. They are even more valuable today, in a context of ecological and social transition that calls for unprecedented democratic mobilization!
The transition will not be achieved unless we are able to exploit all the potential for collaboration and innovation that exists in the regions. Third-Places are avant-garde models that are anchored in these areas, enabling them to broaden and accelerate their own environmental and social transition.
From the point of view of our Climate Commons partnership, Third Places are essential social contexts for effective climate education and, more broadly, for effectively transposing the principles of Buen Vivir into the life of an area! Education, democracy and Buen Vivir suffer in a region where these places for social interaction and the circulation of ideas are absent or rare.
Unlike the concept of ‘well-being’, which unilaterally values the production, private property and consumption of Things, Buen Vivir is centered on Links and favors their regeneration and their development. Because it is the Links that make a good life possible, in common, in our communities! These are links based on cooperation, trust and equity between humans, but also healthy, symbiotic links between humans and the natural ecosystems in which humans are born and develop. In this way, Buen Vivir adjusts and deepens the meaning of the words ‘society’ and ‘community’, which no longer refer only to humans, but to the whole of the Living World with which humans co-exist on their territories.
Promoting climate education and climate action as a common good, co-governed by its users, is the mission that Climate Commons has taken on. Our strategy is to choose Third-Places as privileged spaces for climate education and climate action. Buen Vivir, with its principles centered on the links forged between humans and non-humans, within the Living World, is our Vision for a desirable future – sustainable, climate-resilient, low-emission, inclusive and peaceful.
