Solidarity doesn’t stop, and this month, a fantastic initiative linking the environment and neighborhoods has caught our attention.

What is Climate Suburbs

Banlieues Climat is an association that aims to unite, raise awareness, and inspire the populations of working-class neighborhoods on environmental and climate issues in order to bring their voices and local projects to the forefront of public debate and develop their power to act.

Today, it is no longer possible to talk about environmental justice, or collective emancipation for the whole of society, without mentioning the crucial role of the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods.

Banlieues Climat supports the dream of a greener and more ecological society, driven by and for working-class neighborhoods.

All of its actions are based on 3 central values: the defense of the common good, listening, and hope.

Observations and Actions

For many years, climate change and environmental problems have caused widespread damage, primarily impacting the most vulnerable populations in our society. Poorly insulated housing, unsanitary conditions, difficult living and working conditions, and heat waves, where elderly North African men and women have been the first to be affected, are just some of the many instances where statistics point upwards when measuring the damage inflicted on these vulnerable populations.

ACTIONS – Hub 1: “Inspire and Unite” // Through in-person training sessions in neighborhoods, Banlieues Climat organizes awareness and outreach workshops on climate issues. The goal is to impart the necessary knowledge about climate challenges (energy, health impacts, geopolitics, demographics, the issue of rare metals, etc.) in order to inspire young people and unite them around social and ecological transformation.

ACTIONS – Hub 2: “Creating local and national alliances” // This hub is dedicated to meetings with political institutions focused on ecology, and field actors in several cities in France in order to develop local actions that can serve the populations concerned and empower them to act at their level, individually or collectively.

ACTIONS – Cluster 3: “Developing Projects” // This advocacy cluster brings the voices of young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods into political decision-making spaces and leads to changes in legislation. Banlieues Climat aims to involve working-class communities at the highest levels of decision-making. The organization seeks to support scientific and academic projects that will empower young people to be proactive and provide tailored solutions to mitigate the environmental impact on vulnerable populations.

A book is coming soon!

Sanaa Saitouli, drawing on her extensive field experience, is working to ensure that working-class neighborhoods are part of the climate preservation movement.
A new citizen voice.

Sanaa Saitouli’s commitment to an ecology for all is the fruit of a unique and multifaceted journey. She recounts it in this book. Born in Cergy, she grew up in the 1980s immersed in the triple culture of Morocco, Mauritania, and the Croix-Petit neighborhood, where she developed a true spirit of solidarity. In the fall of 2022, she co-founded, notably with Féris Barkat, Banlieues Climat, a pioneering school that has trained more than eight hundred young people from underprivileged neighborhoods on climate issues, spreading to more than twenty French metropolitan areas as well as to Morocco, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. This success is not a matter of chance but the culmination of a life dedicated for more than twenty years to the most vulnerable, driven by a desire to rebuild connections through popular education and action.
True to her compass, Sanaa Saitouli is now a recognized personality, alongside Laurence Tubiana or Al Gore (2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner) for an ecology that speaks to everyone.
Rooted is the story of a woman who has shaped her life so that other children from working-class neighborhoods can invent their own tomorrow, in the face of the climate emergency.

A helpful and hopeful document.

By (author): Sanaa Saitouli
Other: Anne Pédron-Moinard
Preface by: Laurence Tubiana

To order this book, click here !

The association in photos

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And if you too would like to support their actions and commitments, it’s this way !