TM26
The Cassandra Local Climate Forums: Lessons for ocean sustainability from a socio-political approach to climate change
Thu, 05 Jun, 12:45–13:45 (CEST)|Room 6
Thu, 12:45
The CASSANDRA Programme , coordinated by EURECAT with the support of over 200 supranational administrations, NGOs and research centres addresses four key socio-political consequences of climate change: public health issues, gender inequality, migration, and the exacerbation of the effects of armed conflict. The programme is the identification, development and nurturing of at least 300 local community organisations over a four-year period, in the Mediterranean, Africa and after 2026, India, South-East Asia and the Americas. There are, for the period up to November 2025, 20 Pilot Local Climate Forums in Somalia (3), Kenya (3), Sudan (2), Palestine (1), Nigeria (3), the Democratic Republic of Congo (1), Uganda (2), South Africa (1), Libya (1) and the Euro-Mediterranean region (3). CASSANDRA chooses to work in highly challenging scenarios, to demonstrate: 1) The importance of local people initiating and implementing community actions if supranational ambitions are to be translated into tangible results. 2) That scientists and technologists have a socio-political responsibility to communicate clearly with, and support, communities facing climate change issues, serving as Science Embassies when required by the community. 3) The necessity of a robust capacity to establish a direct link between supranational, international and national entities and local people willing to fight for their homes, their environment, and their future through effective dissemination of the local community actions’ successes and failures and the enabling of face-to-face dialogue between the different political and social actors. 4) By directly engaging with existing social activists and community-driven initiatives, CASSANDRA makes the citizen involvement process cheaper, simpler, and more effective. Rather than creating artificial communities or external projects, the programme aligns with the needs, ideas, leadership, and implementation capacity of the local communities affected by climate change. This ensures that actions are sustainable and self-owned by the communities. Research, policy making and data collection instead of constituting artificial instigators become beneficiaries of a far more knowledgeable and genuinely engaged group of citizen scientists. CASSANDRA is already working with a number of coastal communities and the purpose of the proposed Town Hall, is to demonstrate the worth of its methodology in relation to ocean-based issues.
TARGET AUDIENCE:
The target audience would be researchers, policy makers at a supranational, national, regional and municipal level, multinational, national and SME representatives of the private sector, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and interest groups with a strong connection to not only technical and scientific ocean-based issues but also those concerned with the socio-political drivers and consequences that affect the global state of oceans.
EXPECTED OUTCOME:
The expected outcome of the TOWN HALL would be 1) an enhanced awareness of the role of the local coastal and riparian communities in addressing ocean-based issues 2) the promotion of the training of scientists and technologists from the very beginning of their careers to acquire the skills to communicate in an accessible way with non-scientific sectors of the community 3) a closer collaboration between scientific institutions (Science Embassies), citizens and supranational administrations through permanent dialogue and consultation.