Munich Climate Cafe

Innovative methods for innovative ideas to stop climate change.

15.11.2006 |Hanno Langfelder

Since November 6, 2006 the UN Climate Change Conference in Nairobi has been in full swing. Some five thousand delegates from 189 countries and many representatives from NGOs and industry have been discussing the implications of climate change, the Kyoto Protocol and effective ways of curbing emissions.

WECF has joined the movement, but on a smaller and more local scale. With the financial support by the Munich Re Foundation WECF together with Green City, a local Munich NGO, organised a Climate Café on the evening of November 8, 2006. It was a great success drawing in more than 35 people from many different walks of life.

The goal was to discover innovate ideas for climate protection using an equally innovative method: dynamic teaming. The participants sit at tables of four and in the first round they told each other short success stories. Then shared the success story and key qualities of their partner with the other two people.

Then followed a round of 20 minutes in which the tables selected a climate change relevant area, eg schools, housing or traffic, and started to develop a project. The room was humming with the intensity of the project development.

After about 25 minutes the round ended and two visitors from each table were dispatched to other tables to discover and support the projects at the hosting tables. The participants enjoyed this part immensely and the support to the project ideas was of great value. After another 20 minutes the visitors returned to their original tables and continued developing their project with the fresh input from the visitors.

Time – as always – was the limiting factor and all too soon it was time to come to an end. A final round of sharing of all the project ideas with the entire group completed the Climate Café.

The participants had enjoyed themselves immensely, despite the reservation and uncertainties at the beginning. It just shows how stimulating an inclusive, open dialogue form is for fostering innovative thought and creating ideas.

And these were the projects in brief:

A Climate Protection Race between different cities in Germany, eg Munich vs Hamburg. Who will save more energy? In combination with a large media campaign.
A solar cooker project for Northern Cameroon.
A campaign to convince house owners and tenants to save energy through insulation
A project for increasing the number of people travelling per vehicle; similar to a city toll.
Increasing excellence in housing construction.
A campaign for more effective heating of houses and space.
A story book on C02 – emissions, people, impacts and avoidance.
Climate Change education in primary schools.
An art exhibition on climate change with live effects – you walk into a room and your are in a hurricane. You pass on to the next room and your are standing in a desert.

If you are interested in more detailed information on the projects and the Climate Café do not hesitate to write to me, Hanno Langfelder.