As previously announced on our ArBio Italia Facebook page, ArBio has taken part in a competition organized by the Climate CoLab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. This competition aims at implementing actions that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the effects of climate change. We are thrilled to announce that our project has been identified as one of the finalists!

For the theme of “Land Use: Agriculture, Livestock, and Forestry”, ArBio submitted a description of the project that is being implemented in an area of our concession in Peru, where a productive forest has been developed and planted on the basis of analog forestry principles. Such a forest provides both food and income for the local populations. You can read a comprehensive description of our project here.

This year the judges have evaluated over 600 proposals, but only about seventy of them have reached this stage: it is a great result for our project, which has been evaluated by an international board of experts!

Having reached the final stage, we can compete for two prizes within our theme: the Judges’ Choice Award and the Popular Choice Award. The first is decided by the Jury and the latter is based on the amount of votes received through the competition’s page. Getting either of these prizes earns us the right to go and present our project right at MIT’s headquarters.

MIT’s Climate CoLab is organising a conference called “Crowds & Climate”, on the 5th to 7th of November, 2014, in which various experts will debate the issues of climate change, and the winning projects of each theme will be presented. During the conference the Final Winner (chosen from among all themes) will also be announced, and will receive the grand prize of 10,000 dollars!

The online community of Climate CoLab has 15,000 members, and as many followers on its Twitter account: it is thus a great chance to spread the word about ArBio’s work to a wide audience!

What can you do?

All you need to do is follow this link, click on “Register” and create your account or log in using your Facebook or Google+ credentials, and cast your vote for our proposal. You can do this until September 30th, when voting will close.

Just a few clicks are enough to give our message the chance to reach even more people! Help our branches reach MIT!