Seminar in Reykjavik: Seniors and climate Issues

Seniors and Climate Issues -seminar
Reykjavik 27–28 September 2023

I recently had the opportunity to participate in the Seniors and Climate Issues - For the Benefit of Both seminar in Reykjavik as a representative of Activist Grannies. The meeting, held on 27–28 September 2023, was supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers and had representatives from all the Nordic countries: Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

The atmosphere in the meeting was enthusiastic. We heard presentations from each country. In my presentation, I introduced Activist Grannies and shed some light on the many health threats that the Nordic populations will face with climate change. Some countries (Iceland and the Faroe Islands) were still in the process of establishing actions to activate seniors in climate issues, while other countries, like Finland, already had one or two well-established groups. There were a lot of ideas for collaboration in the air.

The organizing body Environice presented the project and its main outcome to the climate ministers of the Nordic countries at their meeting in the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo on Wednesday 1 November 2023. The Icelandic Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Climate had prepared a short video about the seminar, which was shown before the presentation: https://f.io/IQ3EqPTp   

We are now waiting for a web page to be opened for this new collaboration. In the Nordic countries with aging populations, we seniors have the duty and also the power to take an active part in addressing important national and global issues like climate change. If you have good ideas for Nordic collaboration, please share them on Activist Grannies’ Facebook page.

Helena Kääriäinen
Activist Grannies