The Challenge for the Earth: a year already!
What is the Challenge for the Earth ?
By going to www.defipourlaterre.org, just answer several questions about your lifestyle. Following the answers given, we offer tips for living more environmentally friendly. You can then commit to follow these to reduce for example your energy consumption.
How did the idea of the Challenge come about?
The question that always came back to the Nicolas Hulot Foundation was: "On our scale, what can we do?" We then thought to spread more widely the good gestures to adopt daily, and to engage via the website to respect them! It was important to value the act of each, without making anyone feel guilty.
Have you been inspired by other initiatives?
Yes, there is in Canada "The One Tonne Challenge", which resembles the Challenge for Earth. Following the implementation of this operation, countries such as Morocco, Turkey or Vietnam contacted us to also collect information on this initiative.
What is the main message you want to communicate with this challenge?
It is often thought that greenhouse gas emissions are the business of politicians or industrialists. But individuals are responsible for half of these emissions! This is why we have installed a double meter on the site: the number of committed, but also the one that figures the tons of CO2 that we have saved since the birth of the challenge. It currently stands at 250 000 tonnes, which is the equivalent of the annual expenditure of a city of 25 000 inhabitants.
Did you expect such success?
We did not have specific targets, but we did surveys of environmental petitions and we were hoping about 200,000 registered. We are now about half a million engaged. It is necessary to remain modest vis-a-vis this figure, but it is still well beyond our expectations.
Can this figure make things happen at the policy level?
In politics, numbers matter a lot and this is unequivocal. Our president (Nicolas Hulot ed) uses it especially when he goes to see elected officials to prove that the protection of theenvironment is a national commitment.
Does your challenge affect more one type of population?
Women are slightly more numerous, and we note a number of participants over the age of 60 slightly lower than other age groups, but we explain this statistic mainly because the engagement is mainly via the Internet.
Are children affected byenvironment ?
Verry much. But we decided to no longer target our actions only for them, because they often repeat the actions of their parents, so it is important to educate also adults! However, we find that once teenagers, young people do not care about environmental issues.
Is ecology a subject we learn at school?
Yes ! Since September 2004, children have 30 hours of classes related toenvironment. But it is a transversal teaching that does not only concern the human sciences. Because ecology touches all fields and concerns everyone.
