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Without strong social safeguards, the European Green Deal could inadvertently deepen social inequalities, particularly for low‑income households and vulnerable communities.
“This could mean marginalised groups, such as women and migrants, facing limited access to green opportunities, while enduring the brunt of exposure to increased hazards. At another level, it’s about some people being excluded from decision-making,” explains Antti Tahvanainen from the European Science Foundation (ESF) and coordinator of the ACCTING project.
ACCTING grew out of research revealing the detail of these disparities, including how wealthier areas could be benefiting from green investments while regions reliant on fossil-fuel industries endure job losses and rural communities risk exclusion from opportunities due to poor infrastructure.
ACCTING’s findings go beyond structural analysis, exposing how green transition design and implementation processes can actually reinforce socio-economic exclusion.
“Policies often reproduce or exacerbate inequalities when vulnerable groups lack access to resources, networks, agency and when solutions assume equal capacity to act, which they often aren’t. Our work makes visible how this underlying assumption compromises the Green Deal’s ‘leave no one behind’ promise,” adds Sofia Strid from the University of Gothenburg.
The researchers call for a green transition which is more inclusive, participatory and sensitive to intersectional realities, such as those related to gender, income, age, ethnicity and disability.
Grassroots solutions for lasting impact
ACCTING first worked through a network of national experts to map 700 grassroots green initiatives across 34 countries and identify the most promising. To ground the project in real practices and lived experience, interviews were also conducted with 400 marginalised individuals in 13 countries.
“We wanted to ensure that those most affected by green policies helped identify what enables and what hinders ordinary people from joining the green transition,” explains Strid.
The result was eight thematic research lines, involving 41 experimental studies to assess how the intersection of behaviours, inequalities and Green Deal policies influences the success of these initiatives, for instance by looking at the barriers to accessing healthy food faced by those from low-income backgrounds, single mothers, working parents, migrants or ethnic minorities.
Meanwhile, open studios and participatory co-creation workshops that included civil society, community groups and policymakers then experimented with a range of shortlisted options.
This led to 10 European pilot actions designed for vulnerable groups. The actions aimed to test Green Deal objectives, and focused on a range of issues including energy, mobility, food and disaster management.
For example, the ‘Dialogue & Action against Wildfires’ pilot in Greece was set up to improve disaster resilience. The fire preparedness plans were co-designed with local communities and benefited from local knowledge.
“Designing green initiatives with marginalised groups not only increases participation but drives impactful behaviour change, for solutions that become really sustainable,” says Tahvanainen.
Towards more equitable and inclusive green transition policies
ACCTING’s work offers actionable insights for green transition policies such as the EU adaptation strategy and the farm to fork strategy, alongside the Green Deal itself, that are equitable, inclusive and ultimately effective.
Possibilities cited by the researchers include: energy communities and sustainable mobility schemes supported by grants; urban food and biodiversity initiatives supported by local authorities through community gardens; and youth and civic engagement volunteering.
“Policies must not only reflect intersectional concerns in their design to ensure widespread participation, but integrate social justice indicators into evaluation frameworks,” notes Tahvanainen. “They should also provide targeted financial and advisory support to enable behavioural change.”
ACCTING’s publicly available findings are already helping shape impact assessments of Green Deal policies: Sweden’s Örebro Municipality’s climate strategy and action plan was developed with input from ACCTING, and in early 2025 a new regulation adopted by the City of Rome asserted that only Energy and Solidarity Communities promoting social inclusion would qualify for support.