EU Green Week 2021 and ECSA have signed a Memorandum of Agreement on an Associates Partnership. EU Green Week will promote ECSA as an associate partner, and ECSA will promote EU Green Week across the citizen science community.
EU Green Week 2021 will focus on ‘zero pollution’ for healthier people and the planet. It will be launched with an opening event from Lahti, Finland, on 31 May. The high-level conference will take place between 1-4 June, and partner events will be held around Europe between 3 May-13 June .
The opening event will focus on citizen science and will include a keynote address by Susanne Hecker, the ECSA chair. Susanne will follow speeches by Virginijus Sinkevičius, Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, on ‘Towards a zero-pollution Europe’, and Krista Mikkonen, the Finnish Minister of Environment and Climate, who will talk about ‘Building a carbon neutral Finland by 2035’. All three will then answer questions during the plenary session.
Following the opening plenary, Hester Volten will talk about citizen science programmes to monitor air pollution. Hester is an active member of the ECSA Working Group on Air Pollution and Europe’s Environmental Protection Agencies Interest Group on citizen science.
This collaboration between ECSA and EU Green Week continues a close association that started with the official launch of ECSA at EU Green Week 2013, by then Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik and Jacqueline McGlade, who was due to be UNEP’s Chief Scientist. Since 2013 the EU’s support for citizen science has continued to grow and is widely seen as best practice across the global citizen science community, with support for citizen science through the Horizon 2020 Research Programme and, for the first time, the integration of citizen science data into policy decision-making with the Directive on Single Use Plastics.
ECSA members are encouraged to register their interest for this free event at and take an active part in the online proceedings.
Photo: EU Green Week 2021
