France community action

The aim of this page is to recognise, celebrate and encourage the self-empowerment of community agency networks (CANs) and community groups' activism for climate, environment and many other sustainability topics across France.

News

France
Europe
Global
SMW:off
  • News Paris to showcase what a real bicycle city looks like during Summer Olympics, momentummag.com (Mar 13, 2024)
  • News Why Europe is dismantling its dams, BBC Future (Mar 05, 2024)
  • News France halts €100-a-month electric car leasing scheme after huge demand, theguardian.com (Feb 14, 2024)
SMW:onRead more
SMW:off
  • News Riding the rail revival: how holidays by train are drawing the discerning traveller, positive.news (Mar 07, 2025)
  • News Carbon capture in Mediterranean soil: how farmland can trap greenhouse gases, theconversation.com (Jan 30, 2025)
  • News Despite 2024’s ‘greenlash’, the fight against climate breakdown can still be won. Here’s how. Björn Bremer, Jane Gingrich and Hanna Schwander, theguardian.com (Dec 06, 2024)
SMW:on
SMW:off
  • News ‘Global weirding’: climate whiplash hitting world’s biggest cities, study reveals, theguardian.com (Mar 12, 2025)
  • News Only seven countries worldwide meet WHO dirty air guidelines, study shows, theguardian.com (Mar 11, 2025) — Governments could clean their air with policies such as funding renewable energy projects and public transport; building infrastructure to encourage walking and cycling; and banning people from burning farm waste.
  • News Many cities are banning ads for airlines, SUVs and fossil fuels – and yours could be next, theconversation.com (Mar 10, 2025)
SMW:on

Video

More video: Grand Designs, Brittany Groundhouse, Channel 4, 26 Feb 2009

Networks and sustainability initiatives

Bioregionalism

Climate action

Campagne de sensibilisation à la pollution des eaux à Ploumanac'h (France, Bretagne), Author: Vincent Simar

Open spaces

Community involvement

Open Democracy

Wikipédia: Commission nationale du débat public

Communities online

La 27e Région

Community currencies activism

SoNantes, complementary currency, Nantes region.

Community energy

Ekopedia: Propositions énergétiques pour la France

Food activism

  • Refugee Community Kitchen, serves hot, nourishing meals to displaced people in the UK and France, added 16:27, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Creating a vibrant local food ecosystem through government-NGO collaboration

Up until a few years ago, the residents of Loos-en-Gohelle, a small town in rural northwestern France with over 6,000 residents, consumed imported industrial food products despite significant local production. In addition to the negative health impacts of their diet, this practice also hurt the local economy. In 2013, the town government of Loos-en-Gohelle started a project called VITAL as part of an ambitious program to improve the diets of Loos-en-Gohelle residents.

The project was built on an existing initiative called Anges Gardins, run by a local association that has worked on community gardens and food education for years. It is also part of a long-term, comprehensive transition to a diverse, sustainable local economy from one dependent on coal mining — an industry that vanished when the French government closed the region's coal mines in 1990, in favor of cheaper imports. Food is viewed as a cross-cutting issue, capable of supporting transition in other sectors.

The policy has a two-pronged strategy to meet the goal. First, to stimulate the demand for local, organic food through education, gardening ambassadors, free produce from open food gardens, and more. The town government led by example, by shifting to 100 percent organic food procurement for schools and 15 percent for retirement homes.

Second, to encourage farmers to convert to organic farming and support food distribution. To help achieve this, the town offered farmers free access to land on the condition that they grow organically and that they convert some of their own existing agricultural land to organic as well, thus raising the share of lands grown organically to 10 percent. Terre d'Opale, another local association, coordinates the farmers to ensure diversity of local production and manage distribution. Distribution is handled weekly through a combination of an online store, delivery of food boxes to local collection points, and procurement through catering businesses.

The program has operated successfully for three years. As the program benefits the entire local food ecosystem, including consumers, farmers, food kitchens, and distributors, it continues to grow and serve more and more of the community.[1]

Other initiatives

Archives de Cuisson Solaire - Incredible Edible Fréland - La Ruche qui dit Oui ! - Open Food France - Solar cooking resources in France

Networks: Les Incroyables Comestibles

Ekopedia: Association Végétarienne de France

Reduce, reuse, repair and recycle

Zero Waste Challenge, Roubaix

With an annual average of 243 kg (over 535 pounds) of waste per capita, citizens of Roubaix, in the north of France, were producing less than half their country's average Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Yet their aim to reduce it even further has brought about the Zero Waste Challenge.

Despite having no executive power on separate collection and other waste-related activities, the city has started a program to lead the zero waste movement in France. The initiative challenges around one hundred volunteer families to reduce the amount of solid waste produced at household level by 50 percent over the course of a year. Offering support through an array of events like workshops, coaching initiatives, and other activities such as food exchanges, the program gives no directions — only suggestions. Interestingly, the program bypasses any intermediaries, therefore creating a direct channel between the city and the families taking part.

After the first year, results were more than encouraging, with 70 percent of participating families having reduced their waste production by around 40 percent, while 25 percent of them had achieved an 80 percent reduction. The policy is now also replicated to target other actors such as public offices, four schools, and shopkeepers in the urban area of Roubaix.[2]

Sustainable transport

Trams in France

Since the opening of the Nantes tramway in 1985, more than twenty towns and cities across France have built new tram lines. As of 2020, there are 29 operational tram networks in France, with 3 more planned.

One line is planned to open in Annecy.

Waterways and Canals

The French natural and man-made waterways network is the largest in Europe extending to over 8,500 kilometres (5,300 mi) of which (VNF, English: Navigable Waterways of France), the French navigation authority, manages the navigable sections. Some of the navigable rivers include the Loire, Seine and Rhône. The assets managed by VNF comprise 6,700 kilometres (4,200 mi) of waterways, made up of 3,800 kilometres (2,400 mi) of canals and 2,900 kilometres (1,800 mi) of navigable rivers, 494 dams, 1595 locks, 74 navigable aqueducts, 65 reservoirs, 35 tunnels and a land area of 800 km2 (310 sq mi). Two significant waterways not under VNF's control are the navigable sections of the River Somme and the Brittany Canals, which are both under local management.

Approximately 20% of the network is suitable for commercial boats of over 1000 tonnes and the VNF has an ongoing programme of maintenance and modernisation to increase depth of waterways, widths of locks and headroom under bridges to support France's strategy of encouraging freight onto water.

Citizens data initiative

Maps

Wikimedia Atlas of France

Apps for sustainability

City Gardens, maps over 400 green spaces in Paris and has expanded to provide similar services to the French cities of Metz, Lille, Lyon, Montpellier, Strasbourg and the European Green Capital of 2013, Nantes.[3]

About France

From Wikipedia:France

France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, Germany to the northeast, Switzerland to the east, Italy and Monaco to the southeast, Andorra and Spain to the south, and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its eighteen integral regions—five of which are overseas—span a combined area of 632,702 km2 (244,288 sq mi) and have an estimated total population of over 68.6 million as of January 2025. France is a semi-presidential republic and its capital, largest city and main cultural and economic centre is Paris.

Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. In the Early Middle Ages, the Franks formed the kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralized feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. In the 16th century, French culture flourished during the French Renaissance and a French colonial empire emerged. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

France was one of the first countries to create an environment ministry, in 1971. According to the 2012 Environmental Performance Index conducted by Yale and Columbia, France was the sixth-most environmentally conscious country in the world, one place higher than the previous report in 2010.[4]

Near you

Paris

External links

References

This article is issued from Appropedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.