Changing people’s climate change literacy and promoting sustainable behaviours is essential if we are going to tackle the climate crisis in the coming years. Although various programmes and campaigns exist across Europe to increase awareness around this topic, many address and/or reach a younger segment of the population (e.g. Fridays for Future). This is unfortunate as citizens over 55 years of age comprise about a third of the population in the EU. In addition, to our knowledge not many studies have been conducted in Europe (or worldwide) that have assessed the perceptions and attitudes of older people regarding climate change and sustainable behaviours.

GreenerAge project

The GreenerAge Erasmus+ project aims to address the need to include and engage citizens 55 years and older in the issues regarding climate change and sustainability. The project is a joined effort of partners from Finland (project coordinator - University of Tampere), Germany, (ISIS), Portugal (SHINE 2EUROPE), The Netherlands (AFEdemy) and Poland (Lab 60+). The project aims to co-create a low-threshold online platform that promotes climate change literacy and sustainable behaviours. We aim to engage citizens in this complex topic using a gamified approach in order for them to enjoy using the platform and enhance positive behaviour change as well as supporting them in gaining digital skills. Moreover, we aim to empower citizens in the process of the project for them to become advocates for the GreenerAge project and the issues regarding climate change and sustainability creating a powerful snowball effect.

Alongside co-creating an online platform, we will develop a compendium in which we will gather and summarize good practices regarding for example climate change literacy, promoting sustainable behaviours and gamification. We will also create a trainer manual for adult educators, social workers, volunteers, activists or others who wish to train and engage citizens 55+ in using the online tool and issues regarding climate change. Policy recommendations in the form of a booklet will be made available for informal and non-formal learning free of charge.

Currently the project is in the phase in which the online platform will be developed. Since we aim to co-create the content on the platform narrative interviews and workshops were conducted with citizens 55+ in all partner countries. Moreover, a comprehensive literature study was conducted to gather good practices and lessons learned from science and practice. The results of these activities will be analysed and summarised in national reports in the coming months. The preliminary analysis from the Netherlands already indicates that our participants often had basic knowledge about climate change, but often did not know what climate change meant for their personal situations. Some participants also stated that they felt like they did not have the financial means to act more sustainably. For example getting solar panels or an electric car. In that sense, our initial analysis shows that citizens often only think about cost intensive sustainable measures, but do not always know about other low-cost sustainable measures (buying second hand, making your garden greener, or simple energy saving measures). These insights are invaluable in supporting us to create a meaningful online platform.

Besides co-creating this project with citizens 55+ we also engage relevant associated partners and experts to provide us with expert knowledge and connect us to local initiatives. In this way we plan to increase the reach of our project and present our project results to a wider public. In the coming months we will present all the project results on the website greenerage.eu. You can also take a look on our website if you want more information about our activities, the consortium and the associated partners.