The NGO Cooperation Project title is: "Sufficiency as Climate Action and for Sustainable Lifestyles in Nordic & Baltic Countries and Belarus". In this Project, INFORSE-Europe is working together with CSOs from Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Norway, and Lithuania / Belarus during 2025-26.

To stabilise global temperatures, we need additional climate action, and the purpose of the project is to work for inclusion of a new category of climate action, in the form of sufficiency policies with the objective of having these policies included in climate actions in the Nordic-Baltic countries.
The sufficiency policies include policies for reductions of consumption for instance of transport, housing, and goods as well as policies for replacement of more resource-consuming consumption, as replacing car travel with bicycling for shorter distances.
The project will collect sufficiency policies and practices, including from environmental and consumer organisations. This will be used to develop concrete proposals how sufficiency policies could attract and mobilize consumers. The project will also organize dialogues with environmental and youth CSO’s, develop national and a regional policy proposals, present for Nordic parliamentarians, and organize outreach including a youth camp in Latvia and a Nordic-Baltic seminar.

Objectives

• To make sufficiency policy measures known and accepted as climate policies.
• Strengthen advocates for sufficiency policies so they better can advocate for sufficiency policy measures, and thereby ultimately achieve implementation of these policies as climate policies.
• Strengthen the basis for a successful transition to climate neutrality.

The activities will include:

• Start-up online seminar and a regional Project meeting in Estonia.
• Description of sufficiency measures and identify how they can be part of Nordic-Baltic climate policies. This will include collection of sufficiency measures proposed and realised as well as a survey with a questionnaire for green consumer projects and organisation representatives in the Nordic and Baltic countries. The survey will collect experiences from e.g. Nature Conservation Societies and Consumer Associations in the Nordic and Baltic countries that have been working for several decades with consumers on good environmental choices (e.g. Bra Miljoval in Sweden, Nordic Swan). The results will be used to develop concrete proposals how sufficiency policies could attract and mobilize consumers. The development process will be carried out with help of interviews and literature analysis and result in a description of the chosen sufficiency policy measures and a briefing with detailed recommendations how to communicate concrete sufficiency measures.
• Organise dialogues on and introduction to sufficiency policies. This will include national dialogues (physical and online) and a regional online dialogue with environmental organisations and interested stakeholders, a web site presentation,and dialogues with youth environmental organisations. In Sweden, AirClim will lead a dialogue with the youth environmental organizations in the Nordic countries to develop a youth action plan on sufficiency. The physical part of this will take place at a workshop to be held in 2026 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Swedish youth organisation Nature and Youth (Faltbiologerna). LaGM and EGM will collect views of youth from the Baltic countries.
• Develop national policy papers with proposals for each country, including a list of energy sufficiency mitigation policies proposed/supported by environmental organizations in the country, and a joint policy paper for the countries covered by the project. This will be based on the joint activities with joint descriptions of sufficiency measures and results of dialogues.
• The Belarus partners are working from Lithuania and Poland and will work on the above activities, providing people, both inside and outside Belarus, knowledge about policy options leading to more sustainable developments. The project will also help the Belarus CSOs to include sufficiency measures in their ongoing work for long term strategies and visions for a Green Belarus.
• The outreach will be with newsletters national and international (Sustainable Energy News and Acid Rain), webinars, distribution of policy papers, physical dialogues with CSOs, presentation for Nordic Council Committee for a Sustainable Nordic Region, events, social media, and partners' web sites. Specific events will be a youth environmental camp in Latvia, and a Nordic-Baltic, energy and climate sufficiency seminar in Denmark, both in the summer of 2026.

Background:

The partners have cooperated in previous projects including "Better Green Deal", and want to focus together on issues that are important for sustainable development of the countries, where the partners are located (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, and Belarus).
We need additional climate action to mitigate climate change, and the purpose of the project is to work for inclusion of a new category of climate action, sufficiency policies, with the objective of having these policies included in climate actions in the Nordic-Baltic countries.
Energy and resource sufficiency has received increased attention in recent years as a compliment to energy and resource efficiency concepts (e.g. in IPCC 6th assessment report WG3, 2022). Whereas energy efficiency is to reduce energy input for a specific energy output, energy sufficiency is about avoiding unnecessary energy (and resource) consumption (FULFILL 2024).

The sufficiency concept can be described as policies, measures and daily practices that avoid the demand for energy, materials, water and land while delivering human well-being within the planetary boundaries. Sufficiency is a concept that has not been so articulated in the past, even though the actions have been well known. The realisation of some actions are very straight forward, and provides direct results in terms of reduced energy demand. Examples are to take the bus or train instead of an individual car for traveling from one place to another saving energy and at the same time reducing occupied space, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cost for transport. This example of a modal shift has multiple benefits and gives direct impacts. The challenge lies in making this happen – in many cases the decision on taking the car or the bus/train will be on an individual level while impacts are on system level.

Sufficiency actions have many forms, reducing the need for high-emission transport, large housing and large material consumption. Sufficiency policies and strategies implemented at societal level would stimulate, nudge and regulate towards fulfilling the energy sufficiency potentials. Good sufficiency policies are about making it appealing to choose the less consuming options, not about banning consumer choices. Many sufficiency policies will also contribute to a more equal society, including gender equality, when for instance the need for a car or a large house is reduced. There are also health and well being benefits e.g. when replacing car driving with bicycling.

The partners of the NGO cooperation Project are:

• INFORSE-Europe (coordinator) in Denmark
• AirClim in Sweden
• Norges Naturvernforbundet in Norway
• Latvian Green Movement in Latvia
• Estonian Green Movement in Estonia
• Ecohome NGO in Belarus.