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2.6 million Green Footprints collected by children for the global climate handed over to UN Climate Change Secretariat at the UN Climate SummitPress Release, 2 December 2010 |
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On Wednesday, 1 December 2010, Climate Alliance handed over the Green Footprints collected by nearly 160,000 children in 10 countries to the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, at the Cancún Climate Change Conference in Mexico.
Cancún/Frankfurt am Main. In 2010, a total of 159,528 children participated in Climate Alliance´s "ZOOM - Kids on the Move for Climate Action" campaign to show that the `little ones´ are taking steps to protect the global climate and do not only talk like the `big ones´ at the ongoing UN Climate Summit.
Kids from 10 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey) joined forces and collected a total of 2,660,251 Green Footprints. Each Green Footprint represents one journey to school with a climate-friendly means of transport: on foot or by bike, scooter, inline skater, bus or train.
On Wednesday, Christian Finger, representative of Climate Alliance in Cancún, handed over the total amount of Green Footprints on behalf of all participants to the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres. "It is wonderful to see these children making such an effort to reduce their carbon footprint. They are taking one step after another, just as governments meeting here in Cancun must take one significant step after another to build bigger and better climate change agreements to safeguard the future of our planet," said Ms. Figueres.
"This year, the children wrote down a lot more messages and demands to the politicians. After the disappointments in Copenhagen, they are afraid that once again concrete results will be missing in the end," explained Finger. The children are extremely concerned about the global climate. They - the adults of tomorrow who do not want to suffer the consequences of climate change - are ready to ZOOM on and do things better than their parents and grandparents. The children very much hope that their actions also encourage the adults at the UN Climate Change Conference to take concrete steps in the global combat against climate change.
In the Netherlands, the ZOOM participants met for a Children´s Climate Summit on Monday, 29 November - synchronised to the opening of the COP 16 in Cancún - and handed over their 601,600 "Groene Voetstappen" to the Dutch Special Envoy for Climate Change, Hugo von Meijenfeldt, for him to take the Green Footprints with him to the Climate Summit. One day later, pupils from an elementary school in Vienna handed over 939,026 Austrian "Grüne Meilen" to their Environment Minister, Nikolaus Berlakovich, just before he left for Mexico.
Further information: http://www.local-climate-protection.eu/zoom2010.html --------------- The "Climate Alliance of European Cities with Indigenous Rainforest Peoples" is Europe´s largest city network dedicated to climate protection. Since 1990, more than 1,500 cities and municipalities have joined and made the commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent every five years. Climate Alliance´s European Secretariat helps its members by providing methods and tools to efficiently implement local climate change policies and to evaluate the achievements in terms of CO2 emission reductions. It also promotes the exchange of experiences and lobbies for improved framework conditions at national, European and international levels. -------------------- Climate Alliance / Klima-Bündnis / Alianza del Clima e.V. Angela Hanisch, Public Relations and Newsletter
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