LINCGLOBAL MARS: Mitigación, Adaptación y Resiliencia entre estudiantes: hacia un cambio de paradigma en la energía doméstica

Duration: 30 Months

The project falls within the scope of Collaboration between science and society to identify strategies for mitigation and adaptation to Global Change. Youth is the hope of a society exposed to Climate Change, at around 5ºC above levels at the start of the 20th century, and they will become climate migrants to large, pressured cities. Focusing on the energy behaviour of young people, on lifestyles with lower GHG emissions and less reliance on fossil energy, is vital to mitigate Climate Change and adapt to minimise vulnerability. The main objective is to assess and promote the capacity building of young students* in urban climate change mitigation and adaptation, and efficient energy use. These young people are more vulnerable, because their energy bills represent a high percentage of their income. However, they have the capacity to change the status quo. In this study population, it is key to understand consumption habits and energy use in the home, and thereby provide capacity building (workshops, master classes, etc.) to trainers and to other young people, peer to peer, to influence future generations, as well as future professionals in these fields of energy and cities, transdisciplinarily, to disseminate knowledge and promote effective, structural change.
Specific objectives:

Define the energy context by consortium region, in terms of access to and stability of services at various scales.
Identify common student habitats, by region.
Detect usage and consumption habits, and cases of vulnerability, as well as students' current capacities in mitigation, adaptation and resilience to climate change, of the built environment and energy use (definition of the student threshold), using quantitative and qualitative-participatory approaches.
Assess the multidimensional impacts of habits, adaptation/resilience and energy vulnerability/poverty.
Generate empowering capacity building to mitigate impacts and adapt to Climate Change locally, through simple guides and good practices, for both students and the general public, drawing on the consortium's transdisciplinarity, knowledge and experience in education.
Disseminate results and capacity-building material, multichannel and multiscale (cross-cutting across the project).

The study area covers Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Colombia and Chile, with highly varied climates and subclimates, diverse domestic energy needs and geopolitical situations, heavily affected by Climate Change, and Southern Europe (Spain and Portugal), hit hard by extreme weather events, inequality, and impacts on health and wellbeing, worse where vulnerability exists.
The international relevance involves: 1) analysing and making visible the youth issue in building energy and Climate Change, in the Global South and southern Europe; 2) facilitating detection, capacity building, mitigation and adaptation, to curb impacts per the IPCC; 3) producing reports and guides to generate policies for relief; and 4) empowering society (through international multidisciplinary experts) to change the status quo of young people's habitats, in energy terms. It promotes energy sufficiency, autonomy and transition; better decision-making; personal development, and improved health and wellbeing