When I come across positive examples for sustainability, I want to share them with you. I spent most of my holidays this year at home, but also some days in the South of Germany in a small city called Constance (ger. Konstanz; about 85,000 inhabitants). It is situated beautifully at the Lake Constance (ger. Bodensee) which is at the frontier between Germany, Austria and Switzerland and one of the biggest lakes in Central Europe (check Wikipedia ;-)).
When you live in this region, you do not have to go on holidays at all as it’s beautiful, often sunny and has the mountains close by.
More important than local well-being and tourism potential for this blog is the fact that Constance was the first German city to call out a climate emergy on May 2nd, 2019 (https://fridaysforfuture-konstanz.de/klimanotstand/). This goal is symbolized by the following reminder in the town hall complex:
Constance has since included climate change in its governing structures and measures in the first year after this decision (https://www.konstanz.de/service/pressereferat/pressemitteilungen/erster+jahrestag+klimanotstand). They push for the use of solar panels and plant trees, for example. Climate protection receives a bigger budget and city employees dedicated to the topic. They also started a citizen council on climate questions. Some efforts were hampered by the Corona crisis but the focus on the topic still remains.
Bike use has increased while car use has dropped. This is not very astonishing as the city has a great number of bike lanes and bike streets one of which passes the whole inner city:
I haven’t seen such a good bike infrastructure anywhere else in Germany so far. The street sign in front of the bike street brings me to another topic: For such a small city, the offer of vegetarian and even vegan dishes is pretty good. There is one café, for example, called the ‘Voglhaus’ (http://www.das-voglhaus.de/Neu/philosophie.html) which has a counter showing the carbon emissions saved by people drinking plant-based milk instead of cow milk. They are not entirely vegan but promoted a plant-based diet and offer lots of information about how veganism works and tries to get rid of prejudices on the topic. (Besides, it was yummy there as well.)
There are at least two bulk ware stores in the inner city which is much for a city of that size as well. One of them is partly a nice coffee, the other is shown in the following picture (I was offered a tea by the friendly owner there as well):
The city still has a way to go to reach their goal of being climate positive by 2030 but there are some promising signs that they are actually acting towards it.
Do you know other (smaller) cities which might be on the forefront of sustainability?
Many bigger ones are working together as C40 Cities to tackle climate change:
“Around the world, C40 Cities connects 96 of the world’s greatest cities to take bold climate action, leading the way towards a healthier and more sustainable future. Representing 700+ million citizens and one quarter of the global economy, mayors of the C40 cities are committed to delivering on the most ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement at the local level, as well as to cleaning the air we breathe.” – https://www.c40.org/about
Let’s see what they can achieve in the next few years!
