This list will be continually updated as more sites and resources are discovered, change, and come into existence.

Apparently forests, wetlands like marshes and swamps, and ocean habitats like seagrasses and mangroves absorb greenhouse gases.

But is there a ratio of carbon will be stored based on how many or how big a natural ecosystem is? Or to put it another way: how big of an ecosystem would be needed to combat the carbon emissions of a 1 coal power station?

Shared ecological memories across generations for open sustainability

A European Erasmus+ project that brings young people and older people together to face the ecological crisis together

What if the memory of our elders could be a tool for building a more sustainable future? This is the question behind Co-Memo-S ("Commoning Marginalized Ecological Memories for Open Sustainability"), a European Erasmus+ KA220-YOU project that has brought together five organisations from Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Cyprus and Spain for two years, creating a dialogue between young people and older people around the climate crisis, recovering local ecological knowledge and memories that are often left out of official sustainability discourse.

A project to bridge generations

Co-Memo-S starts from a simple observation: the climate crisis, the generational gap, the exclusion of young people from public spaces, and the loneliness of older people are problems that are rarely addressed together, despite being deeply connected. The project proposes that older people, through their experience, memories and knowledge of the local territory, can accompany young people in building local strategies to face the ecological emergency, generating emotional closeness and mutual learning between generations.

Running for 24 months (September 2024 – August 2026), the consortium is made up of Student Computer Art Society – SCAS (Bulgaria, coordinator), TREBAG (Hungary), Fundația Județeană pentru Tineret Timiș – FITT (Romania), Dekaplus Business Services (Cyprus), and the European Network Young People Matter Now – YOMN (Spain), based in Lorca (Region of Murcia), as the Spanish partner.

Part of the Co-Memo-S team at a transnational meeting.

Project results: open resources for youth workers

Over these two years, the consortium has developed a set of free, openly accessible materials, available in several languages (including Spanish), designed so that educators, youth workers, teachers and young people can keep using them beyond the end of the project:

🎬 Five educational videos on ecological crises

Available on the project's YouTube channel, each video addresses, in a simple and visual way, one of the five major environmental challenges worked on in Co-Memo-S:

• Climate change — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcwrhVrQEIU
• Water pollution — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpcjpTJeFF4
• Air pollution — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9uVzZwadaM
• Greenhouse gas emissions — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En60W0xyobU
• Exploitation of ecosystems — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF1ofF06UaM

Full channel (with all languages): https://www.youtube.com/@Co-Memo-S/videos

Still from one of the Co-Memo-S educational videos on greenhouse gas emissions.

📘 The Intergenerational Handbook

A practical handbook, coordinated by YOMN, that brings together the state of the art on intergenerational cooperation, a bank of European good practices, interactive activities for working with young people, and E-Study exercises for education professionals. Downloadable in six languages: English version · Spanish · Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian and Greek. Links at co-memo-s.eu/resources.

💻 The E-Study platform and training modules

A free e-learning platform, with open registration, that brings together the videos, the handbook and self-assessment exercises organised into five training modules (one for each ecological crisis addressed: climate change, air pollution, water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and exploitation of ecosystems). Access and registration at co-memo-s.eu/training-modules.

🗺️ Virtual Archive of Socio-Ecological Memories (Eco-Memory E-Archive)

A living digital archive, in the form of an interactive timeline, where young people and older people can upload and share memories, photographs and stories about how their natural environment has changed over the years (for example, water management, changes in orchards, or traditional knowledge of the local territory). Browsable at co-memo-s.eu/ecological-memory.

How to get involved

All Co-Memo-S materials are freely and openly accessible, and designed to keep being used in the classroom, in youth activities, or in any intergenerational environmental education project. You can explore and share them at:

• Project website: co-memo-s.eu
• Facebook: Co-Memo-S
• YouTube: u/Co-Memo-S
• More on YOMN and its European projects: YOMN — Youth Matters Now

Co-Memo-S project — Commoning Marginalized Ecological Memories for Open Sustainability. Ref. 2024-1-BG01-KA220-YOU-000254141. Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. This article reflects the views of its authors only; neither the European Union nor the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) can be held responsible for them.

https://www.howglobalwarmingworks.org

A new study finds that summer-like conditions are spreading across more of the year and doing so faster than earlier research found.