The United Nations today announced a campaign to encourage young people to step up their actions to address climate change and ensure a sustainable and happier future for all.

The campaign is launched in partnership with the Angry Birds – the globally renowned mobile game characters – to make a direct link between tackling climate change and people’s happiness and well-being on the occasion of the International Day of Happiness.

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“The Angry Birds have entertained millions of people around the world – and now they are part of making the world a better place,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed Red of the Angry Birds as an Honorary Ambassador for Green at a launch event at UN Headquarters in New York.

“We are proud to give Red a reason to go Green. There is no better way to mark the International Day of Happiness than to have our animated ambassador raise awareness about the importance of addressing climate change to create a safer, more sustainable and happier future for all,” Mr. Ban said.

The campaign, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, the UN Development Programme and UN Foundation, asks the general public across the world to make the Angry Birds happy by taking actions on climate change and sharing their photos and commitments on social media platforms using the common hashtag #AngryBirdsHappyPlanet. By recycling, taking public transportation and conserving water, for example, individuals can share tips on how they can live sustainably and happily in their everyday lives.

As part of his ambassadorial duties, Red will go on a “virtual world tour” starting on 21 March, highlighting various ways to take climate action. His tour will take him to Paris, where countries adopted an historic agreement to address climate change in December, and will end in New York, where world leaders will sign the Paris Agreement at UN Headquarters on 22 April.

During the launch event, the voice actors from the upcoming Angry Bird movie, Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, and Maya Rudolph, and producers John Cohen and Catherine Winder gave hundreds of students gathered in the iconic UN General Assembly Hall a sneak preview of the #AngryBirdsHappyPlanet campaign materials, including public service announcements created to support the campaign. They also asked the young audience for their support to the campaign by doing their part to make a difference on climate change.

Last December, 195 countries reached an unprecedented agreement on climate change. Now that three months have passed since this victory, parties are faced with another, perhaps greater challenge: ensuring the implementation of the pledges made at the summit, now that the media spotlight and public attention has moved to other issues.

Bottom up initiatives will be crucial to achieving the goals set by each party, as climate change is a global challenge with local roots. Global youth have become a key actor at the local level, inspiring communities around the world to adopt environmentally friendly ways of living. All over the world, youth initiatives have grown, driven by determined young people eager to support climate action and have their say in COP negotiations.

This eagerness to impact change and be involved in deciding the future of our planet inspired Fannie Delavelle to set up an initiative aimed at bringing the voice of the global youth to the climate negotiations.

Young people from all around the world were invited to send her questions about climate change. She got lots of replies from every corner of the world: from Ethiopia to China, from Peru to Bulgaria, from the US to Australia, young professionals responded enthusiastically.

During the second week of COP21 in Paris, she asked high-level participants such as Rachel Kyte - CEO of Sustainable Energy for All and former Vice President of the World Bank- to answer their questions. 

The Green and Smart Urban Development Guidelines provide a simple yet high-quality formula to set a new default for Chinese cities. 

City life in today’s China is taking new shapes. Chenggong, a new city district outside of Kunming, is being built in small blocks to tilt transportation towards walking and away from driving. Board a bus in Guangzhou, and the doors open all at once in subway-like fashion before the bus motors down an exclusive BRT lane, cutting congestion and costs. Other neighborhoods, such as Liuyun Xiaoqu, are reinventing their cityscapes by creating car-free zones where pedestrians can walk and shop without the hazards and omnipresent pollution of cars.

While we are continuously learning more about what makes human habitats both livable and sustainable, a consensus has emerged on the most foundational and necessary design principles. Last year, China Development Bank Capital, Energy Innovation, and Energy Foundation created the Guidelines for Green and Smart Urban Development to outline these design principles. The guidelines are highly aligned with the Chinese government’s recent efforts to redirect cities away from sprawl and towards sustainability.

We found that there are 12 that are the most important for urban designers, planners and developers to incorporate into the planning stage. Our approach quantifies these principles to prevent greenwashing. The beauty of these design principles is that they are simple – anyone can understand them and evaluate the sustainability of their own city.

Please download the full report here for details on metrics, best practices, and case studies.

Here is a quick rundown of our 12 Green Guidelines:

1. Urban Growth Boundary: We recommend that every city has an urban growth boundary to prevent sprawl, encourage infill development, and preserve natural resources.

2. Transit-Oriented Development: Transit capacity must be matched to density. This provides better access to public transit and decreases car use. Ensuring that the greatest number of people have access to the best transit options is vital to decreasing car use.  

3. Mixed-use: The intermingling of residential, commercial, and residential uses guarantees residents access to amenities. We recommend that all residents should be at least within 500-meter radius of at least five basic amenities.

4. Small Blocks: Small blocks create a dense mesh of narrower streets and paths that are more pedestrian friendly. They shift people away from cars, which can also improve air quality. They also optimize the flow of traffic.

5. Public Green Space: Attractive public spaces can bring vitality to any city space. Oriol Bohigas, a famous Spanish urban planner, said that “public space is the city.” Without enough public green space, high levels of density can make urban areas feel crowded and uncomfortable. Green space also improves local air quality.

6. Non-motorized Transit: Of the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein said, “I thought of that while riding my bike.” The most attractive cities in the world emphasize the pedestrian environment at a human scale. Walking and biking require less energy than any other type of transportation. Before cars, cities were designed for people. For example, as shown in the photo below, older areas in Shanghai tend to have more people-friendly design characteristics that make them more walkable, bike-friendly, and livable than newer areas.

Older parts of Shanghai boast narrower roads, more storefronts, and well-designed sidewalks and pedestrian crossing areas (Source: CC Huang). 

7. Public Transit: If public transit is a first-class option, people will often choose not to drive. However, public transit must be well-integrated with biking and walking to solve the “last-mile” question of how people will get to their final destinations.

8. Car Control: Even with just one-tenth of Chinese currently owning a car, the major cities already have serious pollution and congestion. Car control will be essential to make streets safer for children and the elderly, alleviate costly congestion and pollution, and rejuvenate public space. 

The social cost of driving is often not accounted for when cities are making economically based decisions around urban development (Source: CC Huang). 

9. Green Buildings: Buildings account for a significant amount of urban emissions. Green buildings, especially when their energy use is properly monitored and managed, can mean significantly less emissions, improved air quality, and more comfort for users.

10. Renewable and District Energy: District energy can result in 30-50 percent reduction in primary energy consumption. Renewable energy is also falling rapidly in cost and increasing in efficiency.

11. Waste Management: For waste management to be sustainable, a significant amount of waste must be diverted from landfills. All buildings should have a waste classification system so that most waste is either composted or recycled.

12. Water Efficiency: Water-efficient fixtures, appliances, and plants can easily decrease water use. Buildings should implement water-saving appliances and green spaces surrounding buildings should use low water-use plants. Wastewater and rainwater should also be recycled and re-used. 

Cities around the world have already put all 12 guidelines into practice, demonstrating their success in creating holistic sustainability, prosperity, and livability. Portland and Stockholm are two leading examples. Benefits include decreased climate impact, improved conservation, economic savings, and higher quality of life. Even car-centric cities like Los Angeles are now developing public transit and adding more biking and walking paths.

Chinese cities are also going green. Few have been able to put all of the pieces together as of yet, but new opportunities are arising. The 12 Guidelines are being implemented in a pilot project tin Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei province, over the coming years. With the urban population expected to swell in China over the next 15 years, the guidelines offer these growing cities a roadmap for how to proceed towards a sustainable future. 

Banner image: This artistic rendition of a walkable urban area shows paths dedicated to biking and walking, small blocks, car control, and public space (Source: Boshi Fu).

Climate change can be a pretty scary and depressing topic, and that makes a lot of us just want to tune it out. Social psychologists have been studying this for a while now, and have some interesting ideas.

1) Future discounting. Humans are pretty bad at long-term planning. Economists, dieticians, and anyone who’s tried to get their dads to quit smoking can tell you that. Climate change moves slowly, and while impacts are being felt here and now, people still perceive it as distant in time and space.

2) Motivated reasoning. We’d like to think we’re rational creatures, weighing evidence and making decisions based on facts, but we’re not. Humans are highly emotional, social beings that seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

3) Emotional numbing. People have been hit over the head multiple times with images of polar bears on melting ice sheets, or the earth on fire. These scary visuals are emotionally jarring, and tend to disengage people from the issue. It’s a lot to take in. So we just tune out.

So how can we effectively engage people in the biggest challenge of our time? Well, knowing is half the battle. Climate & Urban Systems Partnership (CUSP) has been using what we have learned from social psychology to create climate change education programs that counteract some of those more negative reactions.

CUSP is a network of climate scientists, learning scientists, informal educators, and community organizations in four cities in the U.S. Northeast. CUSP develops and delivers programming both in museums and in the community that focus on local climate risks and educates about tangible solutions people can get involved in at the community level. CUSP is currently active in New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., and is led by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Community programs range from short tabletop interactions at festivals, to eight-week programs at senior centers or afterschool centers, to educational workshops at community meetings. For example, in one tabletop activity, participants learn that climate change can lead to increased heavy downpours. They are then challenged to re-engineer their neighborhoods to absorb more water, using sponges to represent green infrastructure. A recent evaluation suggests that this approach not only teaches people about potential climate change impacts and responses but also leads to an increase in conversations about climate change at home. We are continuing to test the idea that engaging in a locally framed and solution-focused activity that promotes hope and empowerment will lead participants to want to learn more about the issue as a whole.

Similarly, the CUSP Map, currently active in New York City and Pittsburgh, allows visitors to make connections between their daily lives and climate impacts. The map, which is used in conjunction with other CUSP programs and products, pairs hard data with local narrative information, creating a local picture of climate impacts and solutions that values the public’s experiences and observations. For example, map users might explore a dataset about precipitation projections or floodplain changes in conjunction with a dataset that shows the location of subway lines, helping them make the connection between a projection (increased heavy downpours and flooding) and an impact (a delayed subway commute).

Our approach of keeping climate information local, relevant and solutions-focused is in line with the latest learning research and science communication research. Ultimately, we want to give hope and empower people and organizations to work beyond personal choices to make an impact on a community and city level. Collectively, we can reduce further damage to the climate and prepare for those changes that are already underway.

There’s one simple fact that we have to accept: Climate Change is real and it is here now.

This has been reflected in the rising of temperatures across the globe - last year was the hottest year on planet Earth since records began. Sea levels are also rising, with island nations such as Kiribati in the Pacific and even cities like Miami under threat!

It’s time to direct our energies to what we can do to get out of the situation we have got ourselves into. For centuries, humans have managed to solve many of the problems that had been tormenting them.  This is reflected in The Power of Man! - a Green Hatters video that tells the compelling story of mankind and its impact on our planet.                                                                                                                                                                 

At last, we are slowly waking up. There are lots of organizations which are focused on trying to reduce their impact on the environment. Governments, NGO’s, different industries and even oil and gas companies are acting. Efficient energy use and green focused strategies are in…LEED certification too. Electric cars are making inroads and there are more and more charging stations on the streets.  Applying carbon pricing on internal projects is a good start to show we are taking social impact into consideration -  even if it sometimes  seems too insignificant.  The truth is that it is being recognized.

But that is not enough!

It is not enough for large employers and government just to talk and act on carbon emission at the work place. They should assume they are in a pivotal position to take this beyond their work borders and follow the example of a lot of companies that are engaging employees in managing their carbon emission, by incentivizing them to make smart daily choices - reduce energy use at home, alternative commute options - sharing rides, bike, use public transportation available et.al.

Products are now out on the market that enable both companies and individuals to calculate their carbon emissions and encourage changes in behavior.  It is time for the rallying call for action, as global citizens, with an individual focus. 

On MIT’s Climate CoLab, Connect4Climate’s proud partner, your climate change solution can win a $10,000 cash prize and be part of national or global plans for climate change.  New contests seek proposals for low-carbon energy, building efficiency, transportation, smart cities, adaptation, shifting public attitudes and behaviors and many more.

Authors of winning proposals will be invited to MIT to present their proposal, enter the Climate CoLab Winners Program, and be eligible for the $10,000 Grand Prize. Plus: If your proposal is included in a top global climate action plan later this year, you will receive CoLab Points, which are redeemable for cash prizes.

Even if you don’t have new ideas yourself, work with over 50,000 members in improving other people’s ideas and support the ones you find most promising.

Entries are due May 23, 2016. Enter soon to receive feedback from Climate CoLab community members and the experts who are overseeing the contests.

Can crowdsourcing save the planet? Find out at the Climate CoLab!