“Mind your future, mind your climate” - an international event was organised by the British Council and the Respekt Institute between the 21st and 26th February in both Brno and Hostětín, the Czech Republic. During this time 22 climate advocates from 7 different European countries came together to discuss and take action against climate change. Their efforts in the Czech Republic culminated on 24th February 2010 at the LIPKA environmental centre in Brno, where the young advocates shared with the public their experiences of communicating climate change.

The climate advocates from Turkey, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia, Finland, Poland and the Czech Republic have all been working on individual projects in their home countries since last summer. Their projects cover a variety of topics: from raising public awareness, promoting sustainable way of transportation or local fruit and vegetable consumption to garbage designing, community work or environmental consulting. However all the project have one message in common: how to communicate climate change.

Once they came together in the Czech Republic, the Climate advocates were split between five working groups according to their target area: politics, media, youth, community and the general public. There were 3 key aspects for each working group to consider: WHAT to communicate, HOW to communicate and the possible BARRIERS they would face.

In Brno each group had the opportunity to test out the conclusions they reached to each of these questions by discussing climate change with people on the streets, university students, NGO workers or municipality officers.

For example the group focused on media had an exciting opportunity to talk to local journalists from leading Moravian newspapers. The outputs from these interviews were extremely interesting and also surprising in some aspects. Among the mainstream media there still appears to be strong feeling of scepticism as to whether climate change is a manmade or natural phenomenon and climate change denial remains rife. On a more positive note, aspirations to use reliable scientific sources as well as a will to cooperate with local exerts have appeared.

Much was learned in Brno including identifying the need for a further working group who would concentrate on engaging with the target group of civic society with an environmental content. The roundtable discussions between climate advocates and the public at the LIPKA environmental centre proved fruitful and productive with everyone involved enjoying sharing their knowledge, experiences and opinions.