GLAP IX: Hiking for Climate

Adonis Velegrakis

Oliver-Leighton Barrett

Desmond Alugnoa

The year 2020 kicked off with Climate Action being under the spotlight across local, national and international political scenes all around the globe. The sudden emergency of CoVid-19 pandemic, however, froze many significant efforts in fighting Climate change and its tremendous impacts.

During the last year, the CoVid-19 pandemic has made its way to replace the headlines in the news, the agendas in parliaments, conferences and boards, while national lockdowns constrained meaningful climate actions on-the-ground. The limitations imposed by the pandemic on an international conference such as the Global Land Paths that is organized every year on the mountains of Greece, jeopardized the overall organization of GLAP’s 9th edition.

As organizers of the GLAP IX, we reviewed carefully practicalities and restrains as resulted by Greece’s national safety directions and by the lockdown measures of other countries where attendees and speakers would come from. We even considered the possibility to cancel the conference. In an effort to avoid that, we became inventive working with the new realities, we dealt with the calculated difficulties and in the end, we proudly materialized the 9th edition of the yearly GLAP conference.

The GLAP IX: Hiking for Climate evolved towards a different direction than how it did in the past years. Most of the speeches were transferred on the virtual space, a lot of outdoor activities like hiking rafting, and outdoor yoga and meditation sessions were incorporated into the programme, and "the natural distancing” in conferencing –a newly introduced term by the director of Land Beyond- was broadly used. Also, our partner "Evropaiki Ekfrasi” granted three students from refugee centers and one from a general high-school to follow the full programme of the GLAP IX conference.

Τhe pandemic became a factor for separation, solitude and cease of plans. At the same time it served people an opportunity to work together by doing the minimum for the benefit of humanity. The pandemic also taught all of us a great lesson for solidarity and altruism for everyone which are the most important elements for effective climate action in the future. For the Land Beyond, our partners Evropaiki Ekfrasi and CUNCR, and the organizers individually, organizing the conference during those difficult times could be considered as well as a clearcut statement that we will continue fighting climate change no matter the circumstances.