The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center has a track record of spurring action and impact addressing pressing global challenges. In 2022 to fill the 2023 residency program year, the Bellagio Center is seeking candidates who are working on projects that explore the “green transition” and its potential to accelerate equitable economic growth, create good jobs, and ensure the sustainability of planetary living. The Foundation is particularly interested in projects and ideas that focus on the needs, aspirations, and leadership of people within low and middle-income countries. These countries bear the least responsibility for creating the climate crisis yet face the greatest risks. We are seeking to support projects advancing positive visions of green transitions for these countries and our world that will promote greater prosperity, inclusion, equality, and human development. This includes not just visions for domestic and regional transitions, but also the question of how these countries and their people can lead in the global green transition and muster international support.
Building Green Economies Residency
This Residency track is targeted towards a broad range of key stakeholders working on the topic of green economic transitions and focused on the needs of people within low and middle-income countries. Realistic projects ranging from the practical to the visionary are welcome. Those that center the leadership and needs of women and young people are of special interest. In particular, the following types of projects and people are well suited:
- Academics advancing research and scholarship on green economic transitions and climate policy
- Journalists, artists, and writers (non-fiction or fiction) disseminating messages about the impact and urgency to realize a low carbon future—and what that future could look like—through the medium of their work
- Policymakers who aim to build governance frameworks, coalitions and more, which will enable action in this pressing issue in low and middle-income countries and/or enhance their leadership and support internationally
- Practitioners, activists, community organizers, and others pushing social change by creating technical and educational tools, working on the frontlines of this issue globally, whose work necessitates an environment for deep thinking on approaches and avenues to impact
We welcome a diverse range of profiles for applicants in this theme. However, all Building Green Economies Residents will be required to describe a project which addresses the theme in a direct and deliberate way.