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For decades we have known that our way of life is causing global warming. And yet, still we haven’t changed direction. Have we been telling the wrong kind of stories about the future? On June 3, Viable Cities’ chief storyteller Per Grankvist took the stage at the STHLM+50 ClimateHub and delivered an energetic and highly entertaining presentation titled ”50 years later – why facts still don’t matter.” The title alluded to the fact that exactly fifty years had now passed since Stockholm hosted the first-ever international conference on environmental issues in 1972. ”We have been pushing facts and scientific solutions for fifty years. We have been talking about how important it is, and playing it out for the people in order to make them change. It isn’t working, and maybe it has to do with the way we tell stories about the future”, Mr Grankvist told the audience at STHLM+50 Climate Hub, a five-day event, organized by We Don’t Have time and the UN Development Program, UNDP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7YEvILR99A So why is storytelling important at Viable Cities? Well, because its mission is to create climate-neutral cities – with a good life for all within the planetary boundaries. The major objective of Viable Cities is to usher 23 Swedish cities – together accounting for 40% of Sweden's population – towards climate neutrality. As a way of reaching this ambitious goal, Viable Cities has developed a method for using storytelling to make elected officials and policymakers understand what a climate-neutral future feels like. By replacing numbers on climate neutrality with narratives the result is that the audience gains a new way of thinking and talking about the future with a high quality of life in focus. Already prior to its launch, the method received international attention from the BBC, Süddeutche Zeitung, and Bloomberg Businessweek among others. During the Stockholm +50 conference, the chief storyteller Per Grankvist explained the research behind the method and presented it in detail for the first time. ”If I say you´re gonna be climate-neutral, it sounds like: ’Okay, I’m gonna take your hamburger away, I’m gonna take your car away, and you can never go to Spain again.’ That sounds boring. We don’t want that, because we are basically kids, all of us. We want fun stuff.” After fifty years of using graphs, stats and diagrams to tell stories about the future, Mr. Grankvist believes it’s time we try something new – using fiction to tell the truth. ”In order for us to be able to relate to stories about the future, they need to be emotionally true. So that was what we began doing within the Viable Cities program, we started to think about: What if we could use storytelling in order to make city officials and policymakers brave again?” He and his colleagues started working on a new concept moving from numbers to narrative. From virtual reality to emotional reality. A fictional form of storytelling that is emotionally true, locally relevant and scientifically correct. ”When we use storytelling in the right way, we can place people somewhere else, and that’s what we’re trying to use as a method”, said Mr Grankvist. Watch the whole presentation to learn more about this new kind of storytelling – and start spreading good stories about a sustainable future. ABOUT STHLM+50 CLIMATE HUB 50 years after the very first UN Environment Conference, placing nature and poverty at the forefront of the international agenda, Stockholm welcomed the world again in June 2022. Together with partners, We Don'tHave Time and UNDP hosted a public arena for the entire week of Stockholm+50, leading up to World Environment Day 2022.
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Cities cover about 3% of the world´s surface, yet they produce 72% of all GHG emissions, cities are growing fast, and it is therefore crucial that work on lowering emissions is accelerated in these key areas. Viable Cities´ work has led to nine Swedish cities signing the FIRST Climate City Contracts in Europe and which means that they have committed to concretely contributing to an increase in the pace of climate transition in cities and becoming completely climate neutral by 2030. The cities and municipalities are: Enköping, Järfälla, Göteborg, Stockholm, Malmö, Lund, Umeå, Uppsala and Växjö. The contracts are also signed by 4 Swedish government agencies that will support and promote this work, these are: the Swedish Energy Agency, Vinnova, Formas and Tillväxtverket. These are ambitious goals and if fulfilled can serve as powerful examples of sustainable urban development. Let´s recognize these ambitions, promote the idea and help push these actors to fulfill their contracts! Read more here: https://www.viablecities.se/klimatkontrakt-2030 https://en.viablecities.se/klimatkontrakt-2030
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