Faced with an increasingly bleak outlook for our planet, with urgent challenges—such as the climate crisis, rising social inequalities, the depletion of natural resources, and prolonged wars—it's common for civil society organizations, governments, and individuals to seek effective and immediate responses, or even good ideas that can be replicated like a recipe. However, complex problems demand equally complex solutions. In this context, the Heinrich Böll Foundation officially launches the Positive Futures platform on September 7, 2025. The Foundation also has partnerships with the Goethe Institute, a German cultural and educational institution abroad, and Visão Coop, an organization of young people from the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro working on climate and technology.
Have you ever stopped to consider that the problem might lie in imagining a promising future based on the accumulation of wealth? When, in reality, building a future in which climate emergencies are under control demands a sustainable lifestyle, the restructuring of our cities, smart food systems, and many other factors that counteract unbridled consumption? These questions may sound naive or outdated these days, but there are many eye-catching initiatives around the world, and we want to share them with you.
Many of the answers to our global problems are already being implemented locally, in communities that often go unrecognized in major international forums. The Positive Futures project therefore aims to connect these people and shine a spotlight on these solutions, grounded in the local knowledge of communities, scientists, and non-governmental organizations that deeply understand the challenges facing their territories.
The initiative is based on the premise that transformative solutions are already underway in peripheral territories—rural and urban—around the world. These are experiences led by civil society organizations that invest in social innovation, community creativity and intelligence, and the power of local knowledge to design more just, sustainable, and diverse futures.
The Positive Futures Project
The Positive Futures Project aims to map, interconnect, and give visibility to transformative projects around the world through an interactive map with a space for networking and experience sharing. The project's results will initially be presented during COP30 in Belém, Pará, in November 2025, in official and parallel spaces, in collaboration with local partners such as the University of the Amazon (UNAMA), the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), and the People's Summit.
In the months leading up to the COP, we will also present and discuss relevant examples, focusing on the collaborative construction of positive scenarios for the future, with the help of a team of expert researchers, thinkers, and specialists from around the world. Thus, positive scenarios for the future will be explored from the local to the global level. Likewise, the interactive project map, which will be developed by Visão Coop, is essential for visualizing these ideas and making them virtually accessible for global exchange.
For Lennon Medeiros, executive director of Visão Coop, the collective and collaborative nature of the project is the main link between the two institutions and the key to its success. "Visão Coop was born from the collective efforts that transform climate vulnerability into collective action in Baixada Fluminense, and it is precisely this experience that motivates us to create a platform like Futuros Positivos." Lennon believes that "laboratories that integrate citizen science, collective intelligence, and climate action—by connecting peripheral communities, researchers, and decision-makers—can bring about efficient solutions for territorial management, producing replicable indicators, cultures, and prototypes, strengthening the climate resilience of those who need it most, as well as influencing global public policies with reliable data and inspiring narratives."
Created in 2020, Visão Coop is a laboratory that builds adaptation strategies and technologies for climate resilience in Brazil's peripheral areas.
A Living Map of Possibilities
The project's proposal is ambitious and deeply connected to the grassroots reality: to map, categorize, and give visibility to transformative projects across all continents. To this end, a global interactive map will be created, with three geographic layers (country, state, and city), which will allow users to visualize initiatives, access information, videos, articles, and even connect with other networks and scenarios.
This mapping will adhere to strict security protocols, such as the confidentiality of exact locations and data encryption, in compliance with the General Data Protection Law. The goal is not only to record the projects, but also to value their unique aspects, promoting the exchange of knowledge and building bridges between different realities.
Categories and Themes: Broad Segments for Connections Between Different Areas
To facilitate navigation and analysis, the initiatives will be organized into five main categories—a practical but not rigid division, as many experiences connect with more than one field:
- Agroecology, Healthy Foods, and Land Use
- Care Economy, Social Enterprise, Sustainable Lifestyles, and Spirituality
- Technology, Governance, and Youth
- Cities, Energy, and Mobility
- Art, Culture, and Other Imaginations
These categories help structure the mapping, but the project goes beyond them. In a second stage, social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental segments will be identified, as well as connections between areas and elements of convergence between different territories. This will enable synergies and exchanges between innovative initiatives from different countries and continents.
Furthermore, through the Positive Futures platform, it will be possible to exchange ideas and experiences and expand the network of contacts among people working in different or related fields, strengthening the idea of common goals and goods. Discussing the commons means thinking about cooperation, about collective actions, where the individual's benefits are shared with the collective's use; it is the foundation of the struggle for the diversity of life and the coexistence of humans and non-humans represented in nature. In other words, social technologies and innovations with a positive impact.
The key element: what to take into the future?
One of the main differentiators of Positive Futures is the search for "building blocks of the future": essential components of each project that, according to its creators, should be preserved and carried forward. This reflection will be guided by a key question: what element of your project would you take into the future?
Based on these responses, it will be possible to identify the values, practices, and innovations that underpin these experiences and can serve as a foundation for creating positive future scenarios—plausible narratives, built on data, stories, and maps, that help us imagine how the world might evolve from these initiatives.
Benefits and Impact
Participating in Positive Futures is, above all, a way to amplify voices and practices that are often overlooked in the global debate. The platform will enable the building of international networks, enabling the exchange of experiences, the development of partnerships, and political visibility.
Furthermore, mapped projects will be able to participate in our events and webinars throughout 2025 and in November during COP30 in Belém, Pará – an opportunity to place, among other things, the knowledge of peripheral communities at the center of global climate discussions.
The platform will be divided into two layers. The first will allow users to read and view the results of studies by the group of experts developing scenarios for the future. The second will be an exchange area for registered projects, which, using a login and password, will have access to announcements and more detailed information about other organizations or movements around the world.
Beyond Recognition
According to Regine Schönenberg, director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Brazil, Positive Futures represents a commitment to the power of grassroots movements and minority groups. "We strongly believe in the solutions created by traditional and peripheral communities and the various activists we support, as they are the ones who truly understand the everyday challenges and solutions," she states. She also emphasizes the importance of reversing the traditional logic of development, valuing exchanges that originate from the local to the global.
“I see this recognition of the strength of the grassroots as one of the few solutions for a humanity shaken by so many foretold tragedies.”
Regine Schönenberg, director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Brazil.
