Challenge Europe to tackle climate change
On 8 April Challenge Europe participants from across Northern Ireland and Ireland returned from a week’s biofuel-powered bus trip to Wales and England, part of the British Council's 75th anniversary events.
For the past eight months, 21 young people from a broad variety of backgrounds in Ireland and Northern Ireland have been developing practical ideas to reduce our carbon consumption and its impact on climate change. The ideas will later form part of a Pan-European effort to tackle climate change across the 15 participating countries.
A fact finding trip to learn more about carbon consumption, the bus visited several eco projects including the Centre for Alternative Technology, the Schumacher College and the Eden Project in Cornwall.
The Challenge Europe participants were waved off from Dublin by John Gormley TD, the Irish Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government who said:
'Climate change remains the greatest challenge of this generation and solutions to the global economic situation lie in investment in climate change.'
'Challenge Europe is a very engaging project and I am pleased to have the opportunity to meet with its participants today. Ireland has its own unique challenges in the area of climate change but there may be things we can learn from our nearest neighbours and I’m interested in seeing what this fact finding mission uncovers.'
The idea for the green bus journey came form the participants themselves who wanted to raise awareness of Challenge Europe and to find out how climate change is being tackled in a number of influential eco projects.
‘This trip was a fantastic educational opportunity for the Challenge Europe participants', said Eoin Campbell, one of the participants.
‘We visited a number of important environmental projects in England and Wales, and met and interviewed leading sustainability gurus such as Satish Kumar and Rob Hopkins along the way. This helped us to discover compelling ideas and approaches that we can now use to inform some of the projects we have been working on.’
