Achieving carbon neutrality is not only a key challenge for humanity, but a target for the EU to be achieved by 2050. Our project, Aligning public and CoRpOrate Sustainability goalS, or ACROSS, sets out to support that, by aligning public and corporate sustainability efforts, more precisely, by leveraging corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes in order to foster sustainable transition. We have talked to BURST’s project manager Katalin Bunyevácz about the project.
As she explains, ‘for most of the partners, public – private cooperation initiatives such as CSR initiatives are quite new. By learning about good practices related to CSR, public authorities discover new ways to approach and solve challenges in cooperation with local businesses. It is expected that experimentation and testing new solutions will be at the core of the project.’
Led by the Romanian municipality of Alba Iulia, ACROSS delivers exactly that. Funded by Interreg Europe, and with partners from Romania, Hungary, Belgium, France, Italy, Croatia, Latvia, and Moldova, the project will harmonise public and private sustainability goals and establish long-term, strategic cooperations between economic actors and local authorities. By incorporating CSR efforts, local authorities can have their capacities multiplied, while corporate sustainability efforts are ensured to fit into a larger picture and thus are not wasted. Like all Interreg Europe projects, activities will focus on analysis, knowledge exchange, and policy improvement – and always, we ask our guest: how does BURST fit into this?
Kata explains, BURST is an advisory partner, focusing on policy work. ‘BURST’s main role is to facilitate the interregional learning process. BURST leads and coordinates the Thematic Expert Team (TET), composed of one expert from each partner city, being responsible for co-designing detailed methodology for all stages of the project, i.e. analysis, knowledge exchange, policy improvement and follow-up. BURST facilitates peer-reviews and cross-sharing exercises among partners, helping them to identify best potential opportunities for knowledge exchange, good practice transfer, and policy improvement.’
This project has only had its first in-person meeting and so we still focus on early challenges. Kata explains that ‘at the beginning of the project, the main challenge was to identify the focus of our work as the theme and target group of CSR activities are quite broad. First, we had to identify the common challenges and knowledge needs of partners.’ From this starting point, the mutual learning process can proceed. We sure will keep an eye on this project and perhaps come back to it at a later phase.