The Park Trophy awarded to the Citizens’ Committee of the High Cévennes Valleys for its Car-Free Week

Les participants et lauréats du trophée du Parc lors de la remise des prix 2024. Midi Libre – Correspondant

Une première remise de prix a eu lieu à Florac, avant celle officielle, à Paris, au siège de l’Unesco, en novembre 2024.

The Park Trophy award is a national initiative supported by the French network of Biosphere Reserves, in order to reward innovative projects in the territories and strengthen the human-nature connection. It aims in particular to highlight original initiatives, for a gentle cohabitation with nature and, above all, “a commitment to a sustainable world“, according to Alexandre Vigne, vice-president of the Cévennes National Park, who chaired the jury awarding the trophy.

This year, thirteen projects were studied by the jury. Several participants in this call for projects were present at the award ceremony on Thursday, September 26, 2024. The opportunity, as Alexandre Vigne points out, to “create a network of projects, a common dynamic across the entire territory“.

With the association Innovation Véhicules Doux

The 2024 winner is therefore the Comité Citoyen des Hautes Vallées Cévenoles, supported by the Syndicat des Hautes Vallées Cévenoles (SHAVC), for the project Une Semaine sans ma voiture (A Week Without My Car). Deployed across the entire territory along the Galeizon valley (12,450 inhabitants), the project was born on the initiative of the Comité Citoyen, which brings together around fifty inhabitants and which benefits from technical and financial support from the community via the SHVC.

The financial support of the Cévennes National Park will allow the committee to implement this innovative week for the region. It will notably allow it to call upon the Millau association INVD (Innovation Véhicules Doux) and its fleet of ten original vehicles. Residents will be asked not to use their private vehicles for a whole week, with a "rolls very gently"  kit: electrically assisted bicycle, two- or three-wheeled bicycles, microcar…

In Paris in November

For the representative of the Citizens' Committee, Mauve Ladrech, "the idea is to do something other than travel alone […]. It is a project that aims to spread for the development of these experiments." The week, which is intended to be festive and attractive, will take place during the spring of 2025.

It was the experimental aspect of the project that won over the jury, especially since the project emerged from a citizens' committee. The project representatives are also invited to the official awards ceremony at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in November by the French Biosphere Reserves Network.

Favorite Award

This year, the members decided to also highlight another project, by exceptionally creating a jury favorite award. Sensitive to the proposal, it was awarded to the Oasis des Ouches, in Saint-Martin-de-Boubaux, for experimentation and research into solutions for adapting to climate change, in order to allow the cultivation of poor soils.

Among the candidates for the Parc trophy, we also found the Noria farm (Earth and humanism), Robiac-Rochessadoule in the Gard; the Arigès castle, in Bédouès, for the protection of bats; the Intercommunal Museum of Open and Urban Art, in Bessèges, in the Gard.

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