Climalab

Since 1991, Colombia's National Constitution has embedded the necessity of education as an essential tool in promoting and raising environmental awareness (1). This is an especially important topic for a country where climate change threatens "significant and long-term effects on fragile and unique ecosystems" (2).

In January 2019, Maria and her co-founders Jhoanna and Andrés Urrego established ClimaLab, to engage and educate young Colombians and women in the country. A month later they began their flagship initiative "Colegios Al Clima Con El País". The primary aims of the project are to provide academic tools on climate action to schools, identify the main sources of environmental damage caused by schools, mitigate said sources, improve the administrative processes in schools to adapt to climate change, update curricular and extracurricular activities on the environment, and place schools at the forefront of sustainability and climate change education. In 2019 and 2020, they have partnered with two schools, Liceo de Colombia Bilingue School and San Mateo Apóstol School. The team works with teachers to integrate environmental education into the curriculums, and also run long-term programmes with students to educate them and engage them in tackling some of the causes of climate change, and create a generation of climate leaders within the institutions. They are also working to develop the capacity for the schools to measure their footprint and thus set themselves environmental targets, a part of the initiative delayed by the pandemic's impact on schools in 2020.

Additional programmes include a documentary that Climalab has produced to explore the intersectionality between the environment, rurality, and gender called "Retratos de Campo: Mujeres de Tierra y Agua". Another is a collaboration with artists to explore and depict climate change and its impacts in a gallery in Bogota. The team has worked in various spheres to drive the discussion on climate change, especially the collaborative work done in the framework of the "Climate Promise" project conducted by the UNDP in Colombia (2020). The objective was to make recommendations to the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development in regard to the update of the Colombian NDCs which allowed the team to coordinate regional tables to talk with young leaders from all the corners of the country to bring their perspectives and thoughts in just one recommendation report.