Global Climathon catalyses innovation from Honduras to Honolulu
Over 6,500 people took part in the largest ever global climate hackathon event this week, encompassing over 140 cities in 56 countries.
The annual Climathon event – hosted by innovation body EIT-Climate KIC – brings together mayors, entrepreneurs, and citizens to generate locally tailored solutions to the climate crisis.
Participants this year spanned the globe from Sri Lanka to Honduras, while a team of 36 young activists participated from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, as they sail to the COP25 Summit in Chile next month.
Winners of this year’s event designed a wide range of innovative schemes that aim to curb greenhouse gas emissions, enhance resource efficiency, and bolster climate resilience.
In Pasig in the Phillippines, for example, one team created a social upcycling enterprise to help women and people with disabilities by empowering neighbourhood ‘sari-sari’ stores to participate in waste segregation.
Another winner in Sydney, Australia, used temperature and precipitation data to better predict the localities most exposed to the adverse impacts of climate change, helping local authorities create more effective climate resilience plans.
In Honolulu, Hawaii, meanwhile, a team worked on the creation of a durable goods plan to limit the damaging effects of tourism on the environment of the Pacific archipelago.
This year’s event built on the success of previous Climathons, which have delivered innovative ideas that have been subsequently deployed at scale.
For example, last year Ecoten designed an Urban Heat Vulnerability Map at the Vienna Climathon. The temperature map identified the neighbourhoods most vulnerable to extreme heat and after the event the team worked with Vienna city officials to develop plans that minimise heat risks for vulnerable groups, such as children and the elderly, in the identified areas.
“By 2050, more than two-thirds of the global population will live in cities, while climate change is expected to affect every country in the world,” Kirsten Dunlop, CEO of EIT Climate-KIC. “Climathon is an empowering movement that offers people the opportunity to work directly with their cities to address the climate emergency. We need radical and transformative ideas – made by people, for people and for the places they live in – that have the power to change the world and prepare cities for the challenges ahead.”
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