Climathon: Cities across 6 continents unite for 24-hours to find best climate change solutions

On 18 June, cities across six continents will unite for 24 hours to work for climate, as part of #Climathon organised by the EIT's Climate-KIC, EU’s main climate innovation initiative. 

Entrepreneurs, students and policy makers will work together to find new solutions to climate change problems, raising from sea-level rise to the conservation of biodiversity. In every city, the teams will engage on social media to exchange ideas with participants from around the world. The best team in each city receives coaching and support from Climate-KIC after the Climathon to move their idea forward together with the city itself. The best teams globally will go to Paris to present their ideas on the world stage during the COP21.

Ebrahim Mohamed, Climate-KIC’s Director for Education, said: “At Climate-KIC, we constantly look for the best ideas. We then focus on training the talent to scale those ideas up to solutions with high impact. With governments from around the world scheduled to meet at the COP21 summit here in Europe, now is the time to empower citizens to take action and find solutions. We also need to find new ways to deal with the climate change that is already occurring.”

The focus in each city is on predefined local climate change challenges, ranging from finding ways to counter threats posed by sea-level rise in Boston, USA, to developing the best solutions to find ways to empower the citizens of São Paulo, Brazil, to improve the conservation of its biodiversity. A full overview of all challenges is available on www.climate-kic.org/climathon.