Global Public Service Team of the Year Award 2019 - 'Climate Champions'

Why this matters

For the second year in a row, Apolitical will be celebrating innovative, groundbreaking teams that get the job done through our Public Service Team of the Year Awards. Though their work often goes unnoticed, we know that teams are at the heart of every effective government and are working hard every day to make people’s lives better.

This award recognises a team or department that’s tackling the climate crisis head-on. This might be by fighting for an innovative new policy, implementing a great climate programme or developing a new internal system helping other public servants go green.

How to Vote

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How we selected the finalists

Our team received hundreds of nominations from teams all over the world. We then reviewed each nomination individually, and a panel of judges at Apolitical decided on a shortlist of teams for each category.

__ Climate Change Collective, DEFRA, UK__

The Climate Change collective at The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK have undertaken a number of initiatives aimed at combating climate change. These include a Teach-In programme, which provides a space where staff can have an open discussion about Climate change science, and a Climate Café facilitator training scheme, which has enabled 25 facilitators at 6 sites to run Climate cafes. They are also in the process of developing tools to help any member of staff determine how they can consider Climate change in their work.

Green Skill Development Programme, India

The Green Skill Development Programme of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is an initiative for skill development in the environment and forest sector to enable India’s youth to get gainful employment in environment, forestry, wildlife and climate change sectors. The programme endeavours to develop green skills amongst workers, including building technical knowledge and a commitment to sustainable development. The first pilot course was formulated for skilling Biodiversity Conservationists and Para-taxonomists, with 94 trainees successfully qualifying as skilled Biodiversity Conservationists and 152 Trainees qualifying as skilled Para-taxonomists. The government is planning to roll out another 30 courses given the success of the pilot.

Green Legacy, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia’s Office of the Prime Minister

In July Ethiopia planted more than 350 million trees in a single day. The planting was part of Ethiopia’s Green Legacy initiative to grow 4 billion trees in the country this summer by encouraging every citizen to plant at least 40 seedlings. Public offices were shut down in order for civil servants to take part. This surpassed the previous record in 2017, when around 1.5 million volunteers in India planted 66 million seedlings in 12 hours. Following a call from the prime minister, a core technical committee was established to coordinate the campaign and ensure tree planting activities across different parts of the country were done properly and effectively at respective planting sites.

Self-reliant Solar Energy Community, Nong Ta Tam Subdistrict Administrative Organisation, Thailand

In Nong Ta Tam the Self-reliant Solar Energy Community ran an initiative which provided 100 percent of the households in the sub-district with low-cost solar energy. Previously around 400 households did not have access to basic electricity, which greatly affected living standards. It also established an alternative energy learning center for the community to train individuals to become technicians, where they learned how to generate electricity from solar energy, using solar panels correctly and how to fix solar panels when they are out of order or broken.

Northern Ontario Grid Connection Project Team, Indigenous Services Canada

The Northern Ontario Grid Connection Project is the largest Indigenous-led and -owned power project in Canada. It aims to connect 16 First Nations to the provincial electricity grid by 2025, end their reliance on diesel power, and provide these communities with clean, safe and reliable energy. The Project will build approximately 1,800 kilometres of transmission lines in Northwestern Ontario to connect 17 remote First Nations communities to the Ontario power grid. In December 2018, the Pikangikum First Nation became the first community to receive power from the new transmission lines. The remainder of the project is scheduled to be completed in phases by 2023.

San Francisco Department of the Environment, US

San Francisco’s Department of the Environment has instituted a series of policies in its attempt to become a zero-waste city. It is one of the only cities in the US that diverts more for reuse than it sends to landfills. City residents and businesses actually compost more material than they recycle, partly aided by the city’s provision of three waste bins, including one for compost. The city has also banned single-use plastic bags and other items that are hard to recycle and developed recycling capacity for items such as film plastic, clamshell food containers, and lower-grade plastics.

__ DCMS Green Network, UK__

The DCMS Green Network, launched in January 2019, exists to encourage and enable DCMS staff to act in a more environmentally sustainable way, at work as well as at home. They are also seeking ways to reduce the environmental footprint of the department as a whole, through its policies, ethos and behaviour. They were the first government department to join the Zero Waste Week campaign this year, and have set up a cross-Whitehall Green Forum which pulls together the leads for each existing Green Network from other government departments (OGDs).