Adapting how we live, move and consume to be more sustainable is perhaps the greatest personal and societal challenge of the 21st century. This challenge is the leitmotif of the #InheritYourFuture forum taking place at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna on 21 November 2018. It provides an opportunity for policy-makers, practitioners, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and citizens to engage in discussion and consider what is necessary to pave the way to more sustainable societies. These will be spurred by inspiring examples from across Europe of concrete action that can encourage and enable people to live and behave in ways that promote sustainability.

Participants at this one-day conference will consider four future positive scenarios for a more sustainable Europe going towards 2040, developed by INHERIT, as well as a ‘road-map’ in the INHERIT areas of ‘living’ ‘moving’ and ‘consuming’ of the kinds of policies that are needed to achieve them. INHERIT has been researching promising practices and connecting initiatives around Europe for the past two years and taken the most recurrent and constructive elements to create its four future scenarios that are meant to encourage citizens to adopt more sustainable lifestyles.

Click here for a video about the four future positive scenarios for a more sustainable Europe in 2040 as identified by INHERIT

There is broad recognition that the global status quo is untenable and that change is necessary to deal with the negative global trends affecting economic, social and ecological perspectives. Sustainability could well become the rejuvenated brand of Europe: “living well and sharing fairly within the limits of our blue planet”.
-Karl Falkenberg, Former Senior Advisor to the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC) of the European Commission.

As the consequences of our unsustainable living patterns become more alarmingly apparent, and have increasing impacts on our health and wellbeing, we need to draw inspiration from the local level of what is possible and working to modify how we live, move, and consume. This Forum aims to encourage and give impetus to such initiatives and to show how we can all be drivers of change.
– 
Caroline Costongs, Director, EuroHealthNet and Coordinator of INHERIT

INHERIT has identified over 100 European promising practices from across Europe that simultaneously contribute to making cities more environmentally sustainable, healthier, and fairer. A selection of these initiatives will be showcased to provide a basis of discussion. These include e.g. Ghent on Guard, a city-wide policy to shorten the food chain; initiatives that encourage people to Switch short car journeys to active travel, and initiatives that improve and encourage the use of green space. Participants in the conference will consider such initiatives to determine how they can be strengthened, emulated and replicated to affect change.

#InheritYourFuture forum is a pre-event to the Austrian EU Presidency conference: “People’s Food – People’s Health: Towards healthy and sustainable European Food Systems” (22-23.11.2018)

 

A report of the event is available here.

 

INHERIT

Read more about INHERIT here.