We were honoured to present project AURORA at the biennial conference of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) in Berlin (6-7th Oct 2022), prominently scheduled to directly follow the keynote in the opening session (given by Prof. Dr. Dr. Sabine Gabrysch from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Impact Research).
Martin Brocklehurst from AURORA gave an overview about our project and its results in the first year. Supported by the INSCICO team, Martin had also prepared two posters, which he discussed with the wider ECAS community.
Presentation
The opening session laid out the problem of climate change and the challenge we all face in holding to the 1.5°C increase in temperatures. The AURORA presentation then offered attendees a practical example they could all follow and mimic to lower their own personal carbon footprint and use to encourage their Institutions to do the same.
The presentation illustrated how one of the pilot schemes was developing in the Forest of Dean and how it had inspired one local community to go further and pioneer a community approach to understanding their carbon emissions and how they could be reduced.
Details were also given about the EU Green Deal and the 10.3 Cluster of projects and links now being forged with UNEP to build access to the World Environment Situation Room (WESR) Citizen Science Portal, so that learning from the EU Horizon 2020 Citizen Science projects could be shared with a Global Audience.
The presentation then concluded with an appeal to all delegates to take action, follow the AURORA programme, take part, copy the approach and convince other Universities across the EU and other Municipalities across the EU to learn from what AURORA was doing.
You can watch the session (10 mins) here:
Poster Session
Project AURORA presented a Poster in the main Poster Session where a short 1 minute summary was made to the 100+ delegates present and questions were then answered as delegates viewed the poster.
During the hour long session contact was made with representatives from Leiden University and from Bilbao University who expressed interest in taking the idea back to their University Management teams. They also confirmed they would contact UPM Madrid and Aarhus to discuss ideas further.
