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An Interview with the Director of

Grenoble European Green Capital 2022 Agency

Guillaume Thiériot

January 10, 2023

Guillaume Thiériot has embarked on something of a nomadic career between local authorities (Director of the Cabinet of the Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur Region, Deputy Director-General of the City of Avignon) and international cooperation (Director of a cultural centre in Guinea-Bissau and Head of the French Cooperation Bureaux in Mozambique and Eswatini). Prior to Grenoble, he took a break in Brazil to work as a freelance journalist.

Has Grenoble learned any lessons from previous Green Capital winners—particularly the former French winner, Nantes?

 

In line with the DNA of the Grenoble area, this European Green Capital Year was first built with its stakeholders. This is a strong originality of our project: its participative dimension.

    This does not mean that we have not looked at what other European Green Capitals have done before us. I even went to Lahti in Finland and Essen in Germany to draw inspiration from their experience.

 

But more than just a source of inspiration for the organisation of our year in Grenoble, these meetings were great opportunities to exchange information on the actions taken to fight climate change.

 

Indeed, this European Commission award is creating a network of cities exploring solutions to the same problems we all face. And this is probably one of the main interests of this award: the collective dynamic of cities that it creates.

 

You spoke at the beginning of the year about the importance of convincing people who had not made any efforts to "go green" so far to get involved. Do you think the programme has done this successfully?

 

A lot has happened this year. Among the programming events and the challenges taken up by local actors, we have labelled almost 1,400 European Green Capital actions. But of course, we cannot convince everyone to act in one year. It's a long-term task that takes time to reach everyone.

 

During this year, we have managed to create a dynamic, to give an impulse. We have experimented with certain actions on the ground, and enabled the actors to meet and act together. We have also created certain tools. It is now a matter of making these actions sustainable, and we are working on this with all our partners. The objective is that the momentum of this year does not stop.

 

How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected the EEC Agency's programme?

 

The pandemic slowed down the start of the year. For obvious health reasons, the City of Grenoble was unable to organise the major popular event planned for the opening of the year in January.

 

This is a sequence that we missed to give a great impulse from the beginning. But I believe that, despite everything, we made it.

 

In a certain way, the pandemic (as well as the war in Ukraine) has also given us food for thought about our lifestyles, our relationship with others and our environment.

 

How has Grenoble benefitted from being European Green Capital 2022?

 

Of course, this European Green Capital Year has been very positive for the image of the Grenoble area. But above all, during this European Green Capital Year, many people have met, learned to work together, and taken part in collective projects. I think this is the greatest benefit of this year. This collective dimension. This networking of actors. People who didn't know each other became partners and started to do things together.

 

Many people understood that the challenge of ecological transition was a collective challenge that we could only address together.