We kicked-off. This week I got to meet the Nijmegen citizens who will join me throughout the next months. We are a group of ladies. We talked about nature’s perspective, stepped out of our human shoes and asked ourselves how would other living beings look at our existence; how could empathy towards the natural world look like… A certain concern for the ecological future of the planet kept coming back. Another concern for future generations of humans came circling back too: we share a culture of thinking fast and short-term, but somewhere along the way we have to start to invest into the larger picture that lays further away from us.
I also paid a visit to DAR, the Nijmegen waste management facility. We went around the site and discussed the manners in which this city is dealing with their waste streams. With small differences comparing to other places, the impact created is large; the devil is in the details, they say. We discussed different scenario’s of citizen involvement, from zero - when waste magically disappears - to high involvement, and the aspects that come along the way.
After a week filled with learning moments, one thing stays in my mind: giving space and time to people to do the right thing. Change is slow and difficult and needs maintained effort to settle. How do we shape social policy that welcomes mistakes too as part of a process of change? How do we build patient policies?