World Climate Day

This Thursday, December 8, we celebrate the World Climate Day, initiated by several NGOs in France and Belgium. To remind the threat of global warming and the need to act to limit its effects.

The objective of this day is to raise awareness of climate change issues and to make people aware of the increasingly important impact they have on our Earth.

This day aims to raise awareness on climate change issues and to expose the increasingly important impacts they have on our Earth.

The ENGIE foundation acts for the climate around 3 themes :

• Raising awareness and mobilizing young people
• Support for research
• Concrete actions to fight against global warming

With 52% of its projects dedicated to access to renewable and sustainable energies and to biodiversity in 2022, the ENGIE Foundation is committed to the environment year after year. Supporting impactful projects, participating in the collective effort of the Agenda 2030 and carrying ENGIE’s raison d’être – “acting to accelerate the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, through more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly solutions” – is what guides the ENGIE Foundation’s action on a daily basis.

With the support of the ENGIE Foundation, GoodPlanet Belgium organized a 4-day training for young people who want to commit themselves to the climate. The goal of this initiative is to train them to become future climate coaches who will reach out to the younger generation to raise awareness and change behavior to protect the future of our planet. Their working group is called “Re-generation”.

The two-weekend training was organized in two parts. The first part focused on topics related to global warming, approached with the help of games, a debate on the ecological transition for a country like Belgium and the Climate Mural.  The second part, focused on the development of their skills to become themselves a coach and present a topic to an audience.

Théophile Lienhardt, coordinator of the project at GoodPlanet testifies: “Several young people told us that they really appreciated the speaking part and learning to put forward their emotions. Indeed, for some participants, the consequences of global warming affect them personally as well as their families. Learning how to manage their emotions in order to convey a powerful message appealed to them!”

Since the end of this training, the young people involved have been speaking out on global warming and reaching out to young people.

The Chair, supported by the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, is a project aiming to study and conduct work to address both the issue of resilience, adaptation and also mitigation with a particular focus on negative CO2 emissions.

This charter of the Polytechnic Institute will be articulated around 4 axes:

Axis 1: The impact of climate change on the producibility of our renewable assets (solar, wind and hydro) and industrial resilience with regard to the associated risks (on an international scope).

Axis 2: Carbon-negative technologies. At this stage, companies are not working as hard on these issues, but they will probably be necessary to compensate for non-avoidable emissions. These technologies raise questions of maturity, economic model and also societal acceptability.

Axis 3: Modeling of integrated energy systems, notably involving electricity, gas and heat/cold networks, storage and production of various kinds. The grid may be local or national.

Axis 4: Training students in the challenges of decarbonation.

The ENGIE Foundation, patron of this project at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, supports this project created as an educational tool on a campus scale. Education and training are at the heart of the ENGIE Foundation’s commitments.

The TRENT Chair aims to:

• to professionalize and internationalize the students’ curriculum (support for students in terms of internships, hosting of local or international experts, creation of a document collection, organization of study trips),
• strengthen support for research on this theme (university observatory, hosting of interns, dissertation prizes, mobility grants, promotion of scientific work),
• share the expertise developed and disseminate knowledge (organization and participation in conferences, strengthening bridges between private and public actors, final publication on all the results achieved).

The ENGIE Foundation, patron of the Chair, brings with the ENGIE Group: strategic orientations, a business and field vision, an adequacy of the actions with the needs of the sector (sharing of field expertise, tutored projects, hosting of trainees…) and relays communication actions.

The Friendship organization, an international network of NGOs, born in Bangladesh in 2002, intervenes with the most vulnerable populations of the country to support them and promote their access to vital services (health, education, energy, climate adaptation and citizens’ rights) with development projects and in emergency contexts.

The Engie Foundation has been supporting this NGO for over 10 years.

Bangladesh is a country particularly vulnerable to floods, tropical storms and cyclones, which are increasing in frequency and intensity due to global warming.

In the coastal region, mangrove forests have a vital function for development and socio-economic prosperity as these ecosystems provide many resources to poor local communities and act as barriers against coastal erosion by mitigating the effect of waves on dykes and limiting saltwater intrusion on fertile land.

Although mangrove planting is a priority climate change adaptation measure in Bangladesh, many reforestation projects are not sustainable because they consist of non-resilient monocultures, are not properly managed during the growth phase, plant the wrong species in the wrong place, or do not take socio-economic factors into account.

In this challenging environment requiring a threefold joint action on environmental, socio-economic and disaster resilience, Friendship has developed a nature-based solution with three goals:

• Plant at least 5 different tree species on hundreds of hectares along tidal rivers. The direct benefits are the limitation of dyke erosion, the protection of agricultural soils against salinization and the improvement of biodiversity and thus the productivity of terrestrial and aquatic biotopes;
• Include the poorest and most vulnerable residents to climate shocks and diversify their livelihoods. This ensures that the trees planted will mature without being degraded by livestock or people driven by poverty.

• Involve local authorities and strengthen their cooperation with the people.

Friendship’s mangrove planting program was initiated in 2017 with support from the Luxembourg Ministry of Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development under the International Climate Finance. More than 100 hectares of mangroves have already been restored in Satkhira district (southwestern Bangladesh), near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today, with the help of 3 million people, the organization has planted more than 3 million trees in the Los Angeles area and has developed one of the largest environmental education programs in the country. TreePeople is now the largest environmental movement headquartered in Southern California.

Its mission: to inspire, inspire and help people take personal responsibility for the urban environment, making it safe, healthy, fun and sustainable, and to share their process as a model for the world.

The planet is getting warmer and big cities are the most affected areas. Studies have shown that by 2050, Los Angeles’ average temperatures will have increased by 1.6°C to 3.85°C. This warming will have a significant impact on communities.

Planting trees is one of the possible solutions to deal with global warming: they clean the air, release oxygen, create a shaded area in the street…

On April 22, on the occasion of Earth Day, the partnership was formalized with the objective of organizing a tree planting in 2023 alongside TreePeople, with the support of the ENGIE Foundation. For the occasion, a moment of awareness was held for the employees with the intervention of a scientific researcher on the advantages of the urban canopy and the solutions based on nature to limit the effects of global warming.

Working alongside this organization reflects the ENGIE Group’s commitment to the fight against climate change.

Find out more about the movement : About Us – TreePeople