I-CHANGE (Individual Change of HAbits Needed for Green European transition)

The I-CHANGE project faced the challenge of engaging and promoting the active participation of citizens for addressing climate change, sustainable development and environmental protection in the framework of the European Green Deal, the European Climate Pact and the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The overall driving concept was that citizens and civil society have a central role in the implementation of environmental protection andclimate action and their direct involvement is essential to drive a true shift and promotion of changes of behaviours towards more sustainable patterns.

The project addressed the environment and climate challenges from two perspectives:

- Empowerment of citizens through knowledge acquired through hands-on participation in the monitoring and assessment;

- Understanding the role and the impact of individual choices (behaviour, lifestyle and consumptions) in daily life and its consequences on the environment.

Throughout a participatory approach, citizens were equipped with practical tools and sensors, as well as knowledge and know-how practices and solutions to reduce their own personal carbon and environmental footprint and to support climate adaptation and mitigation, triggering individual and social innovation.

The activities of I-CHANGE were strongly rooted in real society through interaction, co-development and cooperation with selected Living Labs and their stakeholders (Eight interactive Living Labs across Europe, Israel and Burkina Faso). Citizens learnt about climate change and environmental hazards science to understand how their own behaviour can affect climate change as well as how they can reduce their carbon and environmental footprint through changes in their everyday life.

The project action was also addressed to a wider section of society through dissemination and communication activities aiming at involving the communities by delivering tools for quantifying personal impacts on the environment, indicating concrete examples of behavioural changes and new habits to be adopted, and through Climate Actions training schools.

I-CHANGE also developed a participatory platform, the Environmental Impact Hub, collecting highly heterogeneous data (including those from the citizen science activities in the Living Labs) and information and making them available for citizens, local policy-makersand other actors of society. It explains in a user-friendly way e.g. various hazards that we are facing globally by further linking the hazard knowledge to potential impacts and recommendations for citizens to mitigate or adapt to these hazards. Moreover, the Hub aims to achieve a high level of interoperability with the major European initiatives for data sharing and computational infrastructures as.e.g. Copernicus, GEOSS.

Project reports are available here:

https://ichange-project.eu/project_reports/

Project publications are available here:

https://ichange-project.eu/scientific-publications/​​​​​​​