Vision cards

FLIARA vision cards are based on sustainability innovations gathered through workshops and interviews across Europe. They are a powerful tool for envisioning a sustainable future for rural communities. They facilitate dialogue and action around the unique challenges faced in rural Europe in the context of environmental, social and economic sustainability.  

Rural areas across Europe are facing many sustainability challenges. Through these issues also many opportunities can be found. Stakeholder workshops and interviews in 9 different European countries have provided a comprehensive look into the most acknowledged sustainability issues. Most common ones were the lack of infrastructure, facilities, local services, amenities and activities. Lack of sustainability wisdom was the second most raised issue. Selective population decline feeds lack of economic diversification, restructuring and jobs as well as social capital. 

To solve these sustainability issues, new practices and innovations were detected through workshops. Using Innovation cards (see innovationcards.png),  stakeholders were able to uncover 747 sustainability innovations. These innovations can be divided in 4 different categories: economic/technological (30%), social (28%), political (26%) and environmental (16%). 

Digging deeper into the innovations and the challenges to make them come true, a subsequent workshop unearthed root causes to the sustainability issues. The most common out of the 2,627 identified causes included to add knowledge (8%), to organise concerted action (6%), to add and reproduce local social capital (6%), to add communality (6%) and to adopt sustainable and pro-environmental lifestyles (5%). 

Vision cards present 20 visions of a future where previous sustainability issues have been solved by addressing the root causes. They work as a tool to envision, discuss and unearth new measures and practices by asking the question: What measures would make this vision come true? 

They can empower communities to act collaboratively and think creatively about their social future and rural environment.