Learn about climate change through a playful, collaborative activity

The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are much discussed—indispensable summaries, based on scientific and technical publications, that evaluate the extent to which human activity influences climate change. But how much do we really understand these essential documents?

Climate change is an emergency—a threat to the preservation of life itself. However, too many climate skeptics still call into question the scientific evidence that global warming is caused by human beings.

Cédric Ringenbach believes that this skepticism is rooted in the fact that climate change, due to its scale and complexity, is still poorly understood. To act, it’s necessary to understand: with this in mind, he created Climate Fresk in 2018. Its goal: to raise awareness about the IPCC’s findings for a wide audience. He envisioned a collaborative and interactive activity enabling each participant to decipher the systemic mechanisms of the climate. In this way, he believed, individuals could better grasp the challenge of the climate emergency and actively engage in the socio-ecological transition.

Through its decentralized, participatory approach, Climate Fresk encourages the rapid, large-scale dissemination of a shared understanding of climate issues. The initiative has met with resounding success. In just five years, the organization reached its ambitious goal of “Fresking” one million people, among them the Raccords team, which organized a Fresk workshop in its offices. The facilitator of that event, Benoit Waeckel, is a particularly active member of the Climate Fresk community in Quebec, as well as a trainer of Fresk facilitators and co-founder of Sens climat, a cooperative promoting Climate Fresk in the province. We had the pleasure of speaking with him—and of filming the workshop—to provide you with a sense of how Climate Fresk works.