Climate change and the environment

Event report

The debate brought together different stakeholders in dialogue with the general interested public. The input came from the panelists: Panelists: Martin Zaimov (Founder of Generator and the Bulgarian Electromobility Association, Sofia), István László Bart (European Climate Policy Director at the Environmental Defense Fund, Budapest), Corina Murafa (Global co-leader Next Now: Planet and Climate, Ashoka Special Advisor), Vessela Tcherneva (Deputy director European Council on Foreign Relations/ ECFR, head of Sofia office), Giulia Sofia Sarno (Researcher on Energy, Climate and Resources at Istituto Affari Internazionali, ITA), moderator Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf (Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute and Head of the International and European Governance Program). - The questions and comments that stirred the debate came from the physical audience: especially young people: students all over Romania, participating at the Astra Summer School in the frame of Rasnov Film Festival (FFIR). But the participants also included adults from Rasnov community interested in the field of climate change and guests of the film festival, from different EU countries and fields of action (writers, thinkers, filmmakers, musicians) (50 persons). - The debate was live streamed on EUROPE DIRECT Rasnov Facebook page and so far it reached 520 views: https://www.facebook.com/EuropeDirectRasnov/videos/1482645165437029 The main 7 ideas, derived from the questions raised, were uploaded on the Conference platform. To summarise: Battling climate change it's a field of common action. We need common European solutions for the climate situation. Our climate is not really "made" here. Most of the emissions come from large, global economies and the only way we can influence them is by joint European actions. Climate change continues to be something elusive for the regular citizen, because the causes and the effects are so far away in time (years length). Green transition is not about carbon reduction, or any sort of technicality, but how we live our everyday life: how we travel and where, how we eat, what we eat, what we spend our money on. Climate policies are trying to shape a new economic model for EU and a blue-print of the economic model for the world. - Climate change is the highest threat that we face today, but at the same time it's the biggest opportunity: As we shape our way through the climate crisis, this forces us to look at and rethink many other failing aspects of our system that lead to: inequality, poverty, gender issues, racial issues that are interconnected to climate change. - Until now we haven't included negative environmental externalizations in our economic equation. We should put environment on the finance sheet of the corporations. - Europe should look within, to its cities and citizens, and the resources/solutions it has internally and find a way to take the value from these situations and transform it into something concrete.