What's Climate Change When We Don’t Have Enough People for a Game of Bridge!
Current Environmental Challenges from the Perspective of Small Municipalities
More than a quarter of the people in the Czech Republic live in municipalities with fewer than a thousand inhabitants. They feel the impacts of climate change such as drought, torrential rains, soil erosion, forest degradation, and the rising cost of living associated with the energy crisis. But they lack the human, institutional and financial capacity to confront these impacts. This text focuses on the limited capacity for facing the environmental challenges of today in these small communities, and how environmental organizations can step in. In doing so, it maps a specific type of exclusion — adding “environmental” to the other exclusions: social, economic and geographic. A disconnect from the climate movement and urban trends, a disconnect from sources of new ideas and finance in the form of participatory processes and budgets, a disconnect from professional capacities … This disconnect is compounded by the rise of purely online campaigns and the overall virtualization of the work of environmental NGOs. Online downloadable methodologies and compendia have replaced fieldwork and face-to-face consultation. So how can we build environmental solidarity between urban and rural areas and bridge the gap? How can environmental organisations enter this process effectively and respectfully? How can we promote the path to a sustainable future in the peripheries of the interior? And is this already happening somewhere?