Children symbolically ZOOMed more than 70 times around the world for the global climate

On Monday, 14 December, Climate Alliance together with children in Copenhagen handed over the ”Green Footprints” collected by 180,000 children in 13 countries to the UN Climate Change Secretariat at the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

In 2009, a total of 187,100 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 just talk like the ‘big ones’ at COP15.

Kids from 13 countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey) joined forces and collected a total of 2,861,264 “Green Footprints”. Each Green Footprint represents one journey to school on foot or by bike, meals cooked with regional food or an activity undertaken to save energy.

The suspense of this year's UN Climate Summit seems to have been passed on to the children as well: The Green Footprints collected correspond to a symbolic journey that travels 71.5 times around the world, outdoing last year’s result by a sensational 85%!

On Monday, fifteen children from the Sankt Petri Skole, Copenhagen handed over the “Green Footprints” to Megumi Endo, an employee and representative of the UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, on behalf of all participants. The pupils emphasised how they hope, wish and call for a positive outcome in Copenhagen. They said: “We want that our children also get to know what snow is. So we call on all parties to work for a strong and binding agreement. Please do not disappoint us!”

Ulrike Janssen, Climate Alliance’s Executive Director, underlined the concerns expressed by the children: “These children, the adults of tomorrow, do not want to suffer the consequences of climate change. They are ready to ZOOM on, using all opportunities available to make things better – and we all expect the negotiating parties to do the same!”

Further information:
http://www.local-climate-protection.eu/zoomnews00.html

Claudia Schury, Tel. +49-69-717139-22
c.schury@climatealliance.org

Contact in Copenhagen:
Ulrike Janssen, Tel. +45-53 94 60 69
u.janssen@climatealliance.org

More than 1500 European local authorities, members of Climate Alliance, have committed themselves to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent every five years, with the important milestone of halving per capita emissions at the latest by 2030 (base year 1990). In order to prevent a global warming of more than 2°C the Climate Alliance cities and municipalities expect also of the governments a legally binding agreement of short-term and long-term goals in Copenhagen.

Along with conservation of the global climate, protection of the tropical rainforests is one of Climate Alliance’s central concerns. The partnership with the indigenous peoples of the Amazon region induces to combine conservation of the rainforests with protection of the rights of indigenous peoples. In principle Climate Alliance is in favour of forest protection measures, but worries that instruments like REDD will be used to buy one’s way out of the duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate Alliance / Klima-Bündnis / Alianza del Clima e.V.
European Secretariat
Galvanistr. 28, D-60486 Frankfurt am Main
Tel. +49-69-717139-0, Fax +49-69-717139-93
europe@climatealliance.org
http://www.climatealliance.org

This release was published on openPR.