Greater Geneva City Portrait

The Greater Geneva Doughnut

Downscaling the Doughnut

The Greater Geneva area is a transboundary territory where 1 billion people live in and around the city of Geneva. The French and Swiss parts are strongly connected, with workers commuting every day, and economic and natural resources being shared.
 
 The City Portrait has been created as a framework to the ecological transition strategy for the area: it contains both data and targets for the Greater Geneva area in 2050. The portrait has been defined and quantified by academics, so dimensions and targets are inspired by scientific frameworks such as the Planetary Boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009) and the Human Needs Theory (Doyal and Gough, 1984).
 
To downscale the Doughnut: 

• we used the Creating City Portrait methodology (DEAL, 2020), including the four-lenses tool;
• we organized two workshops with local actors to select the dimensions of the local Doughnut;
• we collaborated with academic experts from many disciplines, as well as experts on local data, to select the right indicators and targets for each dimension.

Greater Geneva's Doughnut includes 10 dimensions and 14 indicators: 

• Carbon, Material and Nitrogen Footprints set the global-ecological ceiling;
• Air pollution, Soil Quality, Engendered Species and Water Quality and Quantity set the local-ecological ceiling;
• Physical and Mental Health, Precarity Index and Perceived Social Inclusion and Democracy set the local-social foundation;
• Imported Forced and Child Labor sets the global-social foundation.

Among these 14 indicators, 6 require additional data to be quantified.
 

The description of the downscaling methodology and results are available in this report (in French).

Political outputs

The Greater Geneva Doughnut provided a scientific basis for political negotiations between French and Swiss elected representatives on the ecological transition strategy for the territory.

In november 2022, the Greater Geneva's Doughnut has been presented at the annual conference of local elected people, attended by about 100 of them.

The negotiations between elected representatives of the French and Swiss parts of the Greater Geneva finally led to a political commitment charter, setting 10 ecological and social objectives for the Greater Geneva in 2050.

"Faced with the erosion of life and the degradation of the climate, civil society today seems unanimous: we can no longer wait.
We, the elected representatives of Greater Geneva, share this view and now wish to make the ecological transition the backbone of our cross-border cooperation."

Extract from the charter "Grand Genève en Transition" (2022)

The Greater Geneva Doughnut served as the source of inspiration for both the definition of the ecological transition, as well as the social and ecological targets included in the charter.
 

"TRANSITION IS A PROCESS OF IN-DEPTH TRANSFORMATION OF THE CURRENT MODEL WHICH SEEKS TO RENEW THE WAYS WE PRODUCE, CONSUME, WORK AND LIVE TOGETHER IN ORDER TO RESPECT THE PLANET'S ECOLOGICAL LIMITS WHILE ENSURING THE CONDITIONS FOR INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING."

Extract from the charter "Grand Genève en Transition" (2022)

The chart has been signed in January 2023, in Geneva.

Since the signature, public services have been working on the production of plans and policies in order to reach the objectives of the Charter.

As of the beginning of 2024, the Greater Geneva Doughnut does not seem to have created much interest on the part of local economic players or the civil society. 

Partners and funding

This work was carried out as part of the PACTE project, co-funded by the UE through the Interreg program.
 The Competence Centre in Sustainability of the University of Lausanne (UNIL, Switzerland) led the study, with the participation of the University of Grenoble Alpes (UGA, France).
 
 Thank you to our two project coordinators, with Geneva's State and Rhône-Alpes region, for their trust and support.