Horizon 2020 iCHANGE project
Techne Consulting is a partner of the iCHANGE project (individual Change of Habits Needed for Green European transition), funded by the European Community in the framework of Horizon 2020 with about € 5 million, started on November 2021 and with duration 42 months.
The I-CHANGE project deals with the challenge of engaging and promoting the active participation of citizens to address 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 concept is based on the idea that citizens and civil society have a central role in the definition of environmental protection and climate action and their direct involvement is essential to drive a true shift and promotion of changes of behaviors towards more sustainable patterns.
The project follows the Innovation actions type of funding scheme and addresses the Topic LC-GD-10-3-2020 "Enabling citizens to act on climate change, for sustainable development and environmental protection through education, citizen science, observation initiatives, and civic engagement”. The project is one of six projects selected from 204 proposed.
I-CHANGE represents a change of paradigm achievable through a multi-disciplinary and participatory approach. The project addresses the environment and climate challenges from two perspectives: (1) Empowerment through knowledge acquired through hands-on participation in the monitoring and assessment; (2) Understanding the role and the impact of individual choices (behaviour, lifestyle and consumptions) in the daily life and its consequences on the environment.
To shape this vision the development of the I-CHANGE action leverages on three main pillars: (1) Climate change awareness: I- CHANGE promotes the knowledge of science and the understanding of physical, socio-economic and cultural processes, to raise awareness and educate citizens to be engaged in the actions toward climate neutrality. (2) Active participation of citizens: I-CHANGE is based on the active participation of citizens in collecting, monitoring and better observation of the environment and of their environmental impacts within a set of Living Labs (LLs) located in different socio-economic contexts, belonging to countries with different levels of climate change awareness and affected by a wide range of climatic conditions in and outside Europe; (3) Improvement of data usability and interoperability with existing and future datasets.
iChange is conducted by a consortium of universities (University di Bologna, Italy; Tel Aviv University, Israel; University College Dublin, Ireland; University de Barcelona, Spain; Wageningen University, Netherland; Universities Hasselt, Belgium), research centers (Centro Internazionale in Monitoraggio Ambientale - Fondazione CIMA Italy; CNR Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche, Italy; Luonnonvarakeskus, Finland; West African Science Services Centre On Climate Change And Adapted Land Use, Ghana), no-profit organization (Fonden Teknologiradet, Denmark; DEN Institute, Belgium), international organizations (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, UK) and SMEs (Techne Consulting, Italy; Kajo pro, Slovakia; CMF Climate Media Factory UG Haftungsbeschrankt] gmbh, Deutschland).