(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Ayeni Olusegun |
The Peninsula
Doha: The Arab Youth Climate Movement Qatar (AYCMQ) has launched the Middle East's first carbon footprint app to commemorate Earth Day. The Qatar-based organisation's initiative is supported by grant funding from the United States of America (USA) Embassy in Qatar.
The launch of the app complements the 'Household Carbon Footprint Initiative,' launched last year. The event was attended by US Chargé d'Affaires Ian McCary, ministry officials, US Embassy staff and the AYCMQ team, including Neeshad Shafi, Executive Director, Dr. Sayeed Mohammed, Director and Project Lead of the initiative and Hessa Al Noaimi, Director of Strategic Partnerships.
Carbon footprint means the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere due to the activities of a particular individual, organisation, or community. On the other hand, offsetting is paying for others to reduce emissions or absorb CO2 to compensate for one's emissions. In theory, carbon offsets help balance the carbon footprint by funding environmental projects that reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
One carbon offset credit supposedly equals one metric tonne of carbon dioxide, or a comparable amount of other greenhouse gases, removed from the air.
The footprint tracking app will calculate the approximate footprint for each household after the information is entered in the designated logs like the type of house, use of gas or electricity for cooking, the number of cars a home possesses, etc.
Speaking to The Peninsula after the launch, Hessa Al Noaimi said AYCMQ has already trained 700 teachers and hundreds of students on how to use the application and hopes to reach 2,000 households soon.
“We are now looking at the second phase of the study, which is the community-based actions. The kids, at this point, would have already input their data into the survey app and would have received their instant results. This will tell them the biggest contributing factor to their carbon footprint. It could be flight, domestic travels like using cars, energy and water consumption,” she said.
Hessa Al Noaimi said the results from the app would spark conversation in classrooms and encourage students to adopt sustainable practices.
“For the older students, we hope to encourage them to develop inventions and creations that look at sustainability, given the information they collect from their class.”
According to Hessa, the aim is to take the first step in climate education at least and facilitate policymaking in government.
“The report that will come out of this is not only going to benefit the people of Qatar in terms of teaching them about where we stand and our carbon status, but it will help the government make evidence-based policies.
'We believe that there is still a huge gap in the environmental field in Qatar and in terms of having the raw and local data to come up with policies that are fitting for our location and context. This is the gap we are trying to fill, which makes us unique. Ours is advocacy, policy, research and its community-based action,” she added.
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