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Twenty five 25 International Climate Champions (ICCs) of the British Council from the Arab world marked Arab Environment day 14 Oct, by putting in practice new skills they learned during a ‘Communicating Climate Change’ workshop at Retaj AlRayyan Hotel in Qatar.
The workshop was aimed to provide ICCs with the communications skills necessary to raise awareness of climate change amongst their peers and in their communities, influence people’s behaviour to limit the impact of climate change and reduce their carbon footprint.
ICCs from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, UAE and Libya come together with regional partners and environmental experts, such as Qatar Scientific Club, Retaj AlRayyan Hotel and Qatar Debates to spread their message and share their projects with the public in Qatar.
The champions had the opportunity to share their ambitious projects which each other including campaigns to replace incandescent light bulbs at mosques with luminescent paint, banning plastic bags, planting trees and date palms, recycling schemes, car pooling initiatives, campaigns to encourage citizens to monitor and reduce their carbon footprint with each other and plans to build a green energy plant.
On the Arab Environment Day the champions were all around Qatar spreading their message on climate change. Some of the programms are a show with Al Jazeera Children’s Channel programme, debate with students at Qatar University, Weill Cornell Medical College, Virginia Common Wealth University, Lectures from experts in the field followed by a tour of the clean energy exhibition at the Qatar Scientific Club, media interviews, and much more.
Dr Sarah May, Regional ICC Manager for the British Council, said: “Arab Environment Day reminds us that climate change affects everyone, but young people the most. It requires collective understanding and changes to the way we all live and relate to our environment and each other.
This is particularly the case here in the Middle East where some countries have among the world’s highest carbon footprints and where water scarcity, waste management, desertification, food supplies and national security are the areas where climate change is most keenly felt.”
Next step three of MED champions Haitham Al-Yaqoubi from Oman, Mohamed Gibril from Libya and Ahmed Al Mogahwi from Kuwait will represent the group and act on climate change issues in the United Nations Copenhagen 15 conference on climate changes to be held in December.
For more information please contact Sarah May.
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