On Wednesday 25 September 2024, I-CHANGE’s Anna Molter and Juan Esteban Quintero Marin gave a talk on “From Awareness to Action: Citizen-Led Climate Initiatives in the I-CHANGE project” to the UCD citizen science community of practice. Anna and Juan explored how Dublin’s communities are turning climate knowledge into impactful action. Over the past three years, the I-CHANGE project has empowered citizens, schools, and local organisations to tackle pressing environmental challenges through innovative Living Labs. Discover how participants have monitored air quality and traffic, analyzed data, and implemented meaningful changes to reduce their carbon footprints. Anna and Juan shared key insights and discuss the successes, challenges, and future of citizen-driven climate action in Dublin.
Resources
I-CHANGE Citizens Science leads to Citizens Actions video
CONNECT Centre: Taking Action with Citizen Science: Accessible Active Travel in Ringsend
ChallengeYeti: Let’s take action to reduce your footprint
Speaker biographies
Anna Molter is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Environmental Modelling with a joint appointment in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy and the School of Biosystems and Food Engineering. She has a PhD in Environmental Epidemiology from the University of Manchester and joined UCD in 2020 as a postdoctoral researcher to work on the WeCount project, which was a citizen science study of traffic in five European cities using low-cost traffic sensors. Following WeCount, she started to work on the I-Change project, which engages citizens through living labs to address climate change, sustainable development and environmental protection within the framework of the European Green Deal. Her research lies at the intersection of environment, health and technology. She is a multi-disciplinary researcher with core skills in pollution modelling, exposure assessment, epidemiology, and spatial analysis.
Juan Esteban Quintero Marin is a research assistant in the I-CHANGE project. He has a Master’s in Earth and Environmental Sciences and his interdisciplinary research focuses on nature conservation, environmental education, and sustainable management of geological resources. Citizen science has been a part of his work in various contexts. In the Colombian Caribbean, he worked collecting local knowledge and involving schoolchildren in citizen science activities on the climate, botany, and geology of the local ecosystem. In Ireland, he worked with the School of Geography using citizen science activities for community appropriation and dissemination of the local natural heritage in the Wicklow and Blackstairs uplands. In I-CHANGE, he is involved in participatory air pollution monitoring and awareness raising.