Golden days of autumn! Crisp and cool days energize the team at Green Map and our colleagues around the world.
This has been a great year for projgress on the Green Map Platform! We have a constant stream of updates thanks to our developer team at the GISCollective (you can also view the more technical open source updates). Behind the scenes, we’re expanding the Platform to make it easier for everyone to make and share Green Maps. Your support makes all the difference!
We hosted events online and in person this season, including the Platform’s lunchtime learning session we created for the Climate Fringe of Scotland. The presentation is now featured in our blog. Let us know if you’d like to create a session like this and involve your part of the world in building capacity, knowledge and networks for community and climate health.
Green Map is included in the Tools for a Warming Planet created by our long-time colleague, Ms. Ferguson and her team - peruse the catalog at warmingplanet.org This traveling exhibition has been shown this year at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven NL, Ars Electronica in Linz AS, and in the International Symposium on Electronic Arts of Barcelona ES and in the US, Arts Santa Monica!
We’re always delighted to hear from Green Mapmakers and share their news.
Society of Wilderness is getting a new project rolling - literally, kicking it off with a 15 day tour by bike around Taiwan! Promoting two new Green Map games is their goal, one based around domestic travel and the other to get acquainted with indigenous and invasive exotic flora and fauna in Yongchunpi Wetland Park. Follow SOW on Facebook to see how they elevate biodiversity across their beautiful island.
Cape Town Green Map celebrated their 13th anniversary and have now published 10 unique Green Maps, as this blog describes. Visit their website for news on local progress in South Africa, too.
Our best wishes to all our GlobalGiving supporters this season!
Summer is a great season for making Green Maps!
People often have extra time to explore, assess and map points of interest, based on a theme like preservation, outdoor activities, food security or green living. Lately, it has been so exciting to see all the new users sign in on our Platform, where a new Green Map can very efficiently and inclusively created, thanks to helpful resources like our data crowdsourcing Campaign tool. Here’s an example:
Have you heard of the Chance Lighthouses?
Over the course of the last 6 weeks, a global community of lighthouse enthusiasts and Green Mapmakers have come together to collate information about Chance Brother lighthouses on our new Platform. The project is led by the UK nonprofit, Digventures. It has been developed in collaboration with our Green Map team, Hannah of Tacit Tacit in Scotland and the GISCollective in Berlin.
Working with DigVenture’s Community Archaeologist Ms. Jago, the Green Map team has trained volunteers on using the Green Map platform, walking them through the leadership and management tools, even supporting them as they designed new icons for the Made In Smethwick: Lighthouses Around the World Green Map. There's a Campaign for quick data collection and the map-in-progress has over 260 entries - see it here!
Mapping these lighthouses gives facinating insight into the development of global trade routes, colonialism and the condition of our coastlines
The group of volunteers meets online to exchange perspectives and lighthouse stories, like the one shown below. Our director has also delivered a talk to volunteers about Green Map movement and how the tools support communities to understand sustainable living locally. Wendy notes:
"The Platform allows you to see the locations of Chance Lighthouses even before the description has been published. This is a great fit with this project’s phase 2 which encourages people to visit the lighthouses, and add photos, soundscapes, and condition or environmental-risk surveys. We love that participants are also mapped! "
Look closer at this heritage-based global Green Map project and its flexible program design. There's a culminating event and reunion on August 18th - watch our social media for an invitation. Our thanks to DigVentures and everyone involved in this fascinating global effort!
Every Green Map shares a unique perspective, whether in Scotland or South Africa (check out the Cape Town 13th Anniversary blog, for example) - your support makes it happen!
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Our hearts go out to the people of Ukraine, and to all others around the world who are caught up in conflicts that are rooted in fossil foolishness. We have known our continued dependencies fuel so many ills, layering injustice and war on top of environmental and public health degradation. Between that and the crushing reality that our planet’s climate is destabilized, our energy choices must be made with our common future in mind.
Luckily, we don't have to drive ourselves to extinction! There are so many resources available today to promote sustainability by communities, companies and individuals, it’s possible and practical to switch to a variety of renewable sources of energy, including human power!
Thanks to the alternative-rich iconography utilized on locally made Green Maps, we’ve all been charting convivial ways to get around without a car, connecting people with the beauty of nature near home, showing local examples of solar, geothermal and energy efficiency, and illuminating opportunities for reducing our own carbon footprint and connecting with local groups advocating for justice and sweeping policy change in government, business, housing and public institutions.
In this way, Green Map System helps inspire local action that can impact effective global policy and help form larger communities of practice that address everything from access to clean drinking water to healthier oceans and education for a more sustainable planet.
GlobalGiving donors - if you want to see positive change accelerate locally, start at home and create a Green Map! Every community has positive efforts underway - you can put them on the map and make energy saving and renewables visible and desirable. It's a great way to help everyone do their part, meet people who want to share their knowledge and perspectives, and empower your community to move towards renewables and carbon smart practices.
We would be happy to help you get started! There’s a new Quick Start Guide for the Open Green Map platform we have been developing with your support at new.opengreenmap.org - it walks you through the steps to get started. Or, pop in for Green Map office hours and ask your questions - the next will be held on Wednesday April 6, 10 AM EDT, use this link - bit.ly/meet-gms422. Thanks to you, making a Green Map remains free for non-commercial projects!
Let’s use our power to change the ways we source and use our power!
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While outcomes of the COP26 climate conference were disappointing, this United Nations event drew our director and local Green Map projects together. We’ll share some highlights in this report and also, see COP #1 and COP #2 on our website for more details and images - your support helped make all this happen!
In Glasgow, we:
• held live events and meetings with present, prospective and past project leaders,
• presented an online hour of terrific Green Map video shorts from 5 countries that share how our adaptable, freely accessible
• tools support climate action and healthier communities,
• co-hosted a ‘green drinks’ (with Climate Clock friends),
• co-created an event for educators,
• and of course, networked like mad. Our thanks to all who guided, hosted and connected there!
Thanks to the Glasgow Green Map, everyone could see how sustainability is infused into Scottish dining, getting around, getting out, shopping etc. Daily Climate Fringe ‘site of the day’ posts drew new audiences and our new ‘what’s nearby’ App was tested there, too.
Excitingly, the GISCollective, developers of the App and the Open Green Map platform arrived and we traveled west to the lush Cowal Peninsula. Dunoon’s Green Mapmakers, Tacit-Tacit Design organized a memorable workshop. A dozen participants from regional agencies, plus Green Party Member of Parliament Burgess, were introduced to our resources and ways to use them in the town’s historic timber Pier. While discussing new icons and ways to meet local needs, we visited magnificent woods and the Ark, a symbolic message to COP26 negotiators - we also set out a sea level rise marker and focused on organizational development and the Scottish context. Our COP #2 post shares more about Dunoon.
Mapping in the field with local organizations was a genuine delight, especially when it takes place in a 600 year old woods in Cornwall England! The group of 18 participants were ages 6 to 86, and all of us felt the centuries beneath our feet in the soft surroundings. With ancient places of worship and wells from medieval times, these Ecogeographers have a serious mission, to protect Reen Wood as the land’s status may change soon. As Wendy noted, “I was invited to the TED Countdown climate conference, where my month in the UK began. In Cornwall, I learned about rewilding and other new land preservation concepts in a unique landscape, rich with standing stones, surfing beaches, verdant farms and former tin mines, all sculpted by winds and time.” Sharing perspectives on place matters, the importance of heritage and climate adaptation, the process drew new potentialities together that will be shared on the map.
Events. Homestays. Marches. Chance encounters. Every experience underscored the value of our community-based approach! Now back in NYC, we’re continuing to work on the future of our movement with the GISCollective, Tacit-Tacit, our Board, advisors and network. Your support makes a crucial difference!
#GivingTuesday is a great time to pitch in as GlobalGiving is boosting all donations made from 12:01am ET to 11:59pm on November 30th, whether it's a one time or a new recurring gift. We're sending this before Thanksgiving so you might have a chance to enjoy the videos and posts during your break!
All best wishes, and thank you for helping us support communities that are adapting and addressing climate health through mapmaking!
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It’s been a good summer at Green Map in NYC, in between epic rain storms and air quality alerts that bring climate issues to the forefront. When we look back to our first climate-focused map made in 2006, we asked, “What’s your dream for the future - the Baked Apple or a healthy, beautiful city?” We’re still asking! And we’re gearing up for a busy autumn with your help.
NYC’s newest Green Map project
We made this map in support of Stuy Cove, a treasured ‘food forest’ that has fed wild birds, butterflies and humans for nearly 20 years. This amazing native plant garden is on the move, and hundreds of plants are being distributed to other gardens, schoolyards and tree beds around the city. We wanted everyone to see where this biological richness continues to flourish, so we created a Campaign survey that sends responses to OGM2, our mapping platform (see bit.ly/SCplants). This makes it easy for each location to record the status of the transplants on this map-in-progress. See it at bit.ly/scplantmap - it’s expected to show about 40 locations when completed.
Making way for storm surge barriers, it’s our hope that Stuy Cove, a project of Solar One, will be able to return to its East River location, and continue supporting biodiversity and education in this community along the Atlantic Flyway, as currently planned.
Events!
Join us online on Wednesday, the 22nd of September, 2021 at 1:30 ET (6:30pm in the UK) with Scottish Green Map projects during Climate Fringe Week which is organised by Stop Climate Chaos Scotland to celebrate and support ways you can engage in climate activism. The event includes a pop in by the GIS Collective, rural and urban examples with Mr. Lovelock of Glasgow Eco Trust and Ms. Clinch of Dunoon's Tacit Design, along with global examples highlighting climate action that will inspire you before, during and after COP26. RSVP here
The next day, our director is presenting at the Service Design Scotland Distanced Gathering, an ongoing conversation hosted by Distanced Gathering that’s broken expectations of what can happen on Zoom. It’s at 11AM ET (4PM in the UK) on Thursday September 23. Delve in and register here.
Live event: Visualize Green Infrastructure! It’s a timely topic for the 10th LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival. Join Green Map’s walking discussion on Tuesday September 28 starting at 5PM ET at La Plaza Cultural, East 9th at Avenue C in the East Village. No need to RSVP. Check out the self-guided green infra tour map we created for Open House New York in 2020.
Supporting Changing Communities
We hope you and your community are moving to address all the issues and impacts coming to light now. With all the alarming news about climate change, we’re doing more, too. Soon, we’ll let you know about COP26-related events in Scotland and online latet this fall.
You can help us make the most of this opportunity to activate climate action through participatory mapping by pitching in by midnight on Friday during the 50% match on donations up to $50 in the Little by Little campaign! Thank you and be well, friends!
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