Discourses and Local Initiatives in the Face of the Ecosocial Crisis. the Case of the District of Sant Andreu in the City of Barcelona.

Climate change and ecological issues have gained prominence in european cities agendas. Nowadays, the debate on the limits to growth is increasingly present, although still secondary in international and urban policies, despite the urgent need to address the climate crisis. In the european context, urban, social and ecological movements focus on the need to transform local economic growth models to tackle the ecological crisis, often defined as ecosocial crisis as a result of simultaneously addressing climate and social agendas, making ecological justice central. These movements and grassroots organizations are not only calling for change, but also propose transformative solutions to the crisis, based on degrowth, everyday environmentalism, and the defense of commons through socio-ecological practices. From an urban governance perspective, there is a call to co-produce climate resilience policies, fostering collaboration between different types of local stakeholders.

Departing from urban sociology and urban sustainability perspectives, this paper aims to understand how public, cooperative and community/civil groups, organizations and initiatives articulate socio-ecological discourses and practices to address the climate crisis and move towards a just socio-ecological transition. Our empirical work focuses on the Sant Andreu district, a peripheral area of Barcelona where social and ecological justice criteria converge in these responses. We conduct a qualitative analysis of discourses and initiatives through interviews and focus groups with public and community stakeholders to examine how these initiatives are articulated.

Our preliminary findings reveal that bottom-up and bottom-linked initiatives for socio-ecological transition, led by grassroots actors, emphasize a transformative discourse that views social issues through an ecological lens. They defense that in peripheral neighborhoods, community action is key to addressing socio-ecological problems, offering collective responses to both ecological and economic challenges that address real everyday needs, through object-sharing networks, energy efficiency workshops, and urban gardens, among other initiatives.