Earth Hour, this Saturday, invites environmental actions – 03/24/2023 – Environment

In the week in which the most recent report by the UN climate scientific panel (IPCC) echoed, with warnings about the need for urgent action to be taken to revert the worst scenarios of climate change, Earth Hour, movement global awareness campaign on the environmental crisis, intends to record a record of participation this Saturday (25).

The initial proposal of the movement, which was born in Sydney, Australia, in 2007 and arrived in Brazil two years later, was to turn off the lights for one hour, starting at 8:30 pm, as a way of raising awareness about the climate crisis.

The campaign, spearheaded by the international NGO WWF, spread throughout the world and was joined by more than one hundred countries. Famous monuments such as Christ the Redeemer, in Rio de Janeiro, the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, and the Sydney Opera House, have been supporters of the initiative since the beginning, which also mobilizes companies, schools, communities and city halls.

This year, the idea is to go beyond turning off the lights for an hour on Saturday night. The idea is to persuade millions of people around the world to take any action, individual or collective, in favor of the planet, for 60 minutes on Saturday from 8:30 pm.

“This year’s motto is ‘Dedicate an hour to the planet’. It’s worth turning off the lights, but also involving family and friends in a community cleanup campaign or carrying out an environmental education action”, says Giselli Cavalcanti, engagement analyst at the WWF Brazil.

The organization recommends that the activities be registered on the Earth Hour website so that the mobilization reaches a record of participation. WWF’s proposal this year is to accumulate an “hour bank” of more than 60,000 hours of activities in favor of the environment, in order to cause a greater impact.

So far, the NGO accounts for 52,000 hours of pledged contributions from people and companies from 137 countries.

In Brazil, membership has tripled in the last week and more than 420 shares have already been registered, with the participation of 65 companies.

Among them are face-to-face and virtual activities by scout groups in the five regions of the country, lectures in schools on ecological footprint, collective effort to collect recyclable materials and awareness actions on the use of water and energy. And yes, Christ the Redeemer, a partner of the initiative since 2013, will have its lights turned off once again.

The change to this “hour bank” format came from the movement’s need to reinvent itself, according to Cavalcanti. Mobilization has been continuous in recent years, even during the Covid pandemic, but WWF realized that it needed to go beyond the lights-out message.

“The main environmental crises of our time, climate and biodiversity, have only worsened since 2007, but we have the opportunity to engage to increase action before they become irreversible, as the most recent IPCC report puts it”, he says.

According to her, the warnings of scientists on the UN climate panel are connected with Earth Hour because they are both a call to action and a demand for politicians and companies to take more effective measures to curb environmental impacts.

The change in Earth Hour’s mobilization strategy is welcome, as it can generate chain actions, in the view of Marcus Nakagawa, professor and coordinator of the socio-environmental development center at ESPM (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing).

“It is important to bring Earth Hour as a personal attitude and promote the perpetuity of the day until it becomes a habit, so that people mobilize to stop and do something for the environment”, says Nakagawa, who is author of the book “101 Days with More Sustainable Actions to Change the World” (Labrador publishing house).

At the same time, maintaining the blackout of lights continues as a way of drawing attention to the issue –especially when city halls adhere and turn off the energy of public buildings and monuments—, but, in Nakagawa’s view, the act must be anchored in the promotion of more systemic actions involving the local population.

“Municipal governments have a great power to multiply the festivity”, he says.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}