Youth-led forum in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, set a base for climate movement in the region. Its initiator and main organizer Liza writes about its highlights and lessons, adding some systems science to back her hope for change.
The climate forum “Climate is changing, are we changing ourselves?” took place in Nizhny Novgorod on February 8-9, as part of Global Power Shift Phase 2 in Russia. About 40 participants from 5 regions of the country met to discuss causes and impacts of climate change and to generate new ideas about its solutions which can be implemented by the society. Among them were university and school students, environmental activists, teachers and journalists.
Although climate change is intensively discussed in Russian society, there is still no good understanding of the problem. Many people suggest that it is just a myth, or it won’t have any significant impact on their country, and this point of view is usual even among people already involved in the eco-movement. That is why a significant part of the forum was dedicated to explanation of climatic, energy-related, medical and social aspects of climate change by experts. Really, the possible climate change impacts on central regions of Russia aren’t as serious as on other regions and countries. But it was noticed by the experts that even here expansion of diseases and their transmitters, for example tics, is already in progress due to change of climate conditions. Another perceptible example of negative impacts is a summer of 2010 when due to a long period of hot weather and intensive forests fires many cities of central Russia were covered by a thick layer of smoke that caused high numbers of diseases and deaths.
Photo: Liza speaking at the forum’s opening.
Discussion of possible solutions which are available for young activists was organized in 4 groups: energy saving, forests recovery, urban landscaping and environmental education.
An expert in ‘passive’ houses building and our friend from Germany, Hartmut Wolter, told us about his experience and observations of building technologies in Russia, which usually don’t take into account energy saving principles. At the same time, such technology as insulation of walls by eco-wadding is a cheap and simple way to avoid energy losses in houses. With Hartmut’s support we’ve already begun an experiment of usage of this technology in Russian realities.
“Power Shift Russia” leader Natalya Belokopytova discussed some general principles of forests planting and growing as an important way to decrease CO2 emission and mitigate climate change impacts with young environmental activists.
In the group dedicated to urban landscaping and gardening coordinated by Mariya Ermilova, eco-activist of the “Green sail” center, they discussed different ways to make our cities greener and to grow food in urban conditions.
At last, the fourth group discussed channels to spread environmental information among different people. This group was coordinated by Anastasiya Laukkanen, who is an organizer of international ecological movies festival “Ecocup” in Moscow and some other cities of Russia. As a result, we decided to organize this festival in Nizhny Novgorod too, since it is a good way to attract attention of more people with different interests and occupations to the problem of climate change.
What are the main findings of the forum? Firstly, it was awesome to meet new people who are interested in the climate movement, to share our thoughts and ideas in a warm and friendly atmosphere. Unfortunately, there are not many such people in our region, but we hope that their number will increase. Secondly, the most interesting and inspiring things on the forum were concrete facts and suggestions about directions of work and possible solutions. It is still an open question, which directions and tactics are the most useful in our country now, but some small changes such as attraction of people’s attention, education for children, planting of forests and energy saving in your house are not so difficult and maybe we should start from them. And as it is known from the latest achievements of modern science, small fluctuations in non-linear systems cause great changes in future. So let’s perturb our world in the right direction.
Photo: A climate forum without a cat is a no go.
The climate forum was one of the first steps to create a climate movement in our region: to get public attention to the problem and to stimulate active involvement of young people. We are going to continue this work in May on Youth Ecological Assembly in the scope of international forum “Great Rivers” which takes place in Nizhny Novgorod every year. During the Assembly we’ll have a chance to spread our knowledge and ideas among other young people (schoolchildren and students) from different regions of Russia.
Liza Dubrovina, ‘Green Sail’ center, for Global Power Shift
More photos here.