More than 75 community groups from all over Ireland are taking part in a new and innovative climate competition – the first such national challenge for community groups.
Funded by Irish Aid and organised by Global Action Plan in partnership with Ducky.eco, the ‘Climate Heroes’ competition provides a unique opportunity for local groups who are trying to minimise their carbon footprints.
The team-based climate competition began on Earth Day 2023, 22 April, and lasted for two weeks.
Live Dashboard
The Climate Heroes Challenge provides a unique combination of encouragement, education and real life climate impact, offering participants a menu of 40 climate smart activities, based on the four main areas of individual greenhouse gas emissions: Transport, Food, Consumption and Energy.
Using aggregated climate data and Life Cycle Assessment analysis per activity, the challenge provides a gamified, research-based platform that aims to engage people and create awareness about the big difference that small actions can achieve. The Challenge will be supported by workshops that build participants’ competencies for global citizenship.
The Climate Heroes challenge is a friendly competition, but it is also a serious tool for climate education. It’s a powerful way to explore how people can respond to climate change, as consumers and active global citizens.
By taking part in the challenge, people can discover practical ways to reduce their CO₂ emissions and make climate action part of their everyday lives.
In our workshops, we see that people are often overwhelmed by the interlinked dimensions of sustainability – for example, when something makes environmental sense, but is financially unsustainable. The Climate Heroes competition supports small actions that can have a positive benefit, and opens a discussion about bigger actions we can take for sustainable communities.
Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time and if we are to address it effectively we will need to make changes at all levels of society. It’s not an either-or situation. The climate heroes platform supports Irish people to respond to this global challenge as active citizens.
The Climate Heroes Challenge was formally launched by Minister of State for International Development and Diaspora Sean Fleming TD and is open to community groups and local initiatives in all 32 counties of Ireland.
