Global Campaigns: One Giant Leap 2009

The December UN conference in Copenhagen, saw the conclusion of our 2009 One Giant Leap campaign for clean electricity.

Copenhagen was expected to deliver a new climate deal to succeed and expand upon the existing Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. With electricity representing nearly a third of man-made CO2, we sought to instate a carbon budget in that deal which would cover the power emissions from the most polluting countries in that sector.

With help from Parkour Generations, Sandbag called on the support of the global parkour community to galvanize the public and politicians in support of our campaign. On Saturday September 26th 3,688 parkour athletes staged events in 127 cities across 35 countries around the world, making this the largest event in the history of the sport (see our event map below).

Our hub event in London twas attended by the UK energy minister, Ed Miliband, and covered by Associated Press, Xinhua News Agency and The Guardian amongst others. Many events around the world successfully attracted press and broadcast media, including excellent TV coverage in Poland and in Spain.

In November, local Barcelona athletes converged on the Fira Gran Via convention centre to help promote our campaign and the draft legal text we had produced for delegates. It was here at Barcelona that the expectation of reaching a deal by Copenhagen first began to be seriously doubted.

At the Copenhagen conference itself, Sandbag pooled its One Giant Leap signatories with petitions from other climate NGOs from around the world gathered under the TckTckTck coalition. Together we presented UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer and Conference President Connie Hedegaard with over 10 million petitions calling for a Fair, Ambitious and Binding deal. Anticipating such a deal might not be reached in Copenhagen, Sandbag arranged a separate handover of our campaign petitions to Environment Minister of Mexico, Juan Rafael Elvira. Mexico will preside over the annual Climate Conference when it convenes in November 2010 and our campaign will hopefully be front of mind as they prepare for their new role.

In the wake of One Giant Leap, Sandbag will continue to push for tough international action on climate change, starting immediately with our EU: Not Done Yet! campaign, pushing Europe to take on more ambitious climate change targets for the Copenhagen Accord.

Please continue to follow and support our actions and campaigns.

One Giant Leap Jam Locations