Recommendations – Climate Change

From the 12th to the 21st of July 2017, AMSED organised a seminar in Strasbourg on the topic of the environment: “Let’s change our behaviour, not the climate!”. During ten days, the forty participants from Europe, the Caucasian and North African countries, have thought about the question of climate change: its causes and effects, the representations and policies about the environment put in place in the different countries, and, ultimately, the possible solutions to answer this major problematic of our century.

 

As a result of these multiple workshops – individual and group work, theoretical reflections or based on concrete examples – that they have realised throughout the seminar, the participants made a list of concrete recommendations, targeting the four main player groups of our society: civil society, the media, public and private businesses, political decision-makers.

 

They were supported in this task by four experts: M. Voltz, representing the association COLECOSOL, M. Francesco Morra, participant to the seminar and journalist in Italy, M. Schultz, director of the public institution IRCOD and M. Ramdane, elected member of the green party at Strasbourg’s municipality.

 

 

Civil society

  • Local Community
  1. Push local communities to use locally produced food
  2. Raise farmers awareness to use the land in a rational way
  3. People should produce less waste and consume less
  4. Support people to organise themselves to produce locally and share and exchange their knowledge and work together.
  • NGOs
  1. Support universities and schools with EVS / stage interns
  2. Make a transparent footprint label about work conditions
  3. Capacity improvement
  4. Food outreach/awareness program
  5. Control big industries in order for them to respect the law
  6. Networking
  • Education
  1. Integrate sustainable growth activities in national education
  2. Special courses on sustainable growth
  3. Train teachers in sustainable growth
  4. Educate people so they can get the correct information about climate change

 

The Media

  • TV/Radio
  1. More educational advertisements on climate change
  2. Specialised programs like cartoons and animations
  3. Obligatory broadcasting (10/15 min on each channel)
  4. Cheaper advertisements for eco-friendly and local products
  5. More visibility for environmental campaigns
  • Social Media
  1. Create an application to get information on where to make eco-friendly purchases
  2. Creating trend topics everyday / tweet-retweet
  3. Favour the Youtuber channels that talk about the environment
  4. Measuring ecological footprints through Facebook
  5. Making money through Youtube other video platforms and donating it to NGOs
  6. Create a public Youtube channel
  7. Create a blog to share eco-gestures
  • Billboards
  1. Increase the visibility of environmental problems

 

Public and Private Businesses

  1. Promote recycling (usage of recyclable products, put in place a recycling branch)
  2. Initiate in each institution environmental norms and ensure their enforcement
  3. Promote partnership and implication of all concerned parties
  4. Promote low greenhouse gas emitting energies and create positive energy buildings (eco construction and water processing)
  5. Put in place in all school and university programs modules related to the protection of the environment and the climate
  6. Promote the elaboration of green spaces
  7. Promote an agriculture that consumes low levels of non-renewable energy, protecting the earth (erosion) reduce water consumption and less pesticide use (protect the fauna and the flora)

 

Political decision makers

  1. Include in school curriculums a main subject about the environment
  2. Favour recycling of household waste, waste sorting (at home, in schools, hospitals, shops, etc…), set up collective compost and collects of rain water
  3. Implementation of legal provisions that 30% of green space should be used around buildings
  4. Implementation of norms on the isolation of new building that are being built
  5. Increase taxes for private transport
  6. Make public transportation easy and more accessible
  7. Trainings for the elected representatives (politicians)on environmental issues
  8. Increase funding for eco-friendly enterprises
  9. An application to discover politicians and to see their agenda and the topics she/he is interested in.