Record breaking donation to climate project at Roskilde Festival

Monday, 13 July 2009 14:06

It’s not just about music, beer and sun at the popular festival which transforms a field outside the city of Roskilde, south of Copenhagen, into a pulsating party zone for four days every summer.

This year’s festival from July 2 to July 5 has, in collaboration with the Danish aid organisation DanChurchAid , collected around 37,000 Euros for water irrigation in Malawi, a country suffering badly under the effects of climate change.

The money has been donated as part of the festival’s climate campaign Green Footsteps, encouraging guests to carry out climate-friendly actions before the festival. 1580 people took the ‘green footstep’ to donate 23 Euros to the climate change project in Malawi when buying tickets. The festival itself is donating 306,000 Eurosto the project.

Other ‘green footsteps’ include taking public transport to the festival and throwing a sustainable party. Three green footsteps secure guests a camping space in the 'climate community', a CO2-neutral area in an attractive part of the crowded camp site.

"The Roskilde festival has had a green profile for many years,"says Camilla Pallis, from the Green Footsteps campaign.
"But because of COP15, we’ve decided to make it our main focus this year."

"We hope that the initiatives here will contribute to raising green awareness, not just while people are here, but that it will stay with people once they go back home."

The festival is bursting with initiatives aimed at inspiring a more sustainable lifestyle.

Behind the huge recycling sign marking the entrance to the 'climate community' various groups encourage guests to take part in climate-related activities, such as letting NGO-visitors sleep on their sofa during COP15 or to swap clothes in a 'swap shop' instead of buiyng new items. An activist battling the heat in a furry panda costume invites guests to support the WWF's ‘Earth Hour’ campaign. The UN campaign to back at new climate treaty at COP15 also makes an appearance, in the shape of ‘ seal the deal ’ stamps, smudged on several guests’ sunburned arms.

Guests can charge mobile phones and cameras by pedal-power, on bicycles connected to generators. Bicycles pressing plant oil also power an impressive ferries wheel offering an excellent view of the entire dusty festival area.

Private, green innovation also thrives at the festival. Many camps get all their power for huge stereos and mobile phones from DIY solar panels and wind turbines.

"It’s cheaper, because we don’t have to buy batteries, it saves us the long walk to the charging stations and at the same time, we help fight climate change," says a proudly smiling electrician, pointing at three diminutive wind turbines attached to the top of his tent.

In the more glamorous genre, MTV is running a campaign to ‘ kiss for climate ’ asking guest to kiss on camera. One kiss donates one Euro to the Bellona Foundation, inventing environmental technology.

The Danish Minister for Climate and Energy, Connie Hedegaard, visits the festival on its final day. From the main stage she tells a huge audience about the importance of acting to protect the climate immediately, while green balloons containing water, sunflower seeds and helium are let into the air by the Danish climate collective ‘Penguin Army’, in order to spread some unorganized nature by sowing sunflowers in unexpected places.

As the festival draws to a close with a much-anticipated concert by UK pop-band Coldplay, Nobel-prize winning inventor of micro-credits, Muhammad Yunus, visits the main stage.

"Today we’re making the world a worse place than when we found it, we can’t keep doing that," he states passionately.
"When there’s something you know nothing about, you’re in the best position to change things," he says, referring to how he invented micro-credit schemes without any prior knowledge of conventional banking.

"Your ideas can change the world!" he shouts to the sea of attentive faces and leaves the stage to let Coldplay underscore his message with the opening lines of their hit song 'Yellow'

(Source: www.cop15.dk)