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1. Green volunteering

2. Green production and consumption

Green volunteering

In Denmark, there is no top-level public programme or action aimed specifically at helping young people to engage in green volunteering activities.

However, the Danish Nature Agency administers its homepage which is updated to describe possibilities for people to volunteer in local outdoor projects, for instance, monitoring bird life, constructing mountain bike trails in national forests, volunteering at a nature centre, etc. The homepage is targeted at the entire population not specifically young people.

If a young person or an association wishes to volunteer in outdoor projects, they should contact the Danish Nature Agency’s contact person at their local unit.

The young person or the association can suggest a specific task to carry out, and often a cooperation agreement with the Danish Nature Agency is formulated.

The objective of the homepage is to strengthen interest in nature and outdoor activities, as well as to increase the co-responsibility for nature.

The Danish Nature Agency is under the auspices of the Ministry of Environment of Denmark.

As another example of green volunteering opportunities, the Danish government wants to complete 15 nature national parks and can designate up to 5 more areas where nature national parks can be established.

The objective of the nature national parks is to optimise the conditions for nature and biodiversity in Denmark. The Danish Nature Agency is responsible for the projects. The agency is responsible for developing project proposals for the nature national parks. In this process, working groups that will be involved in developing the proposals are established. The Minister for Environment has appointed the movement The Young Biodiversity Ambassadors to the national stakeholders working group. 

Moreover, the Ministry of Environment participated in the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity. Young people and youth organisations were involved in the process of preparing the Danish approach. The Minister for Environment involved civil society in a range of meetings and conferences before the 15^th Conference of the Parties.

Green production and consumption

There is no recurring top-level public programme aimed at helping young people orientate themselves towards green consumption or production patterns. However, the Ministry of Higher Education and Science has launched a couple of challenges in higher education institutions: Open Innovation X and Green Challenge.

In 2019, the Minister for Higher Education and Science launched the Green Challenge. The challenge ran from mid-2020 to August 2023, and it was possible for all scientists, including young scholars, employed at a public research institution to participate. The challenge asks three questions:

• How can we turn CO2 into a resource?
• How can we develop a plastic-free future?
• How can we produce enough food for everyone?

In 2023, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities collaborated with the Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship in launching 2023’s Project Edison – a nationwide competition of innovative solutions for schoolchildren in 6^th and 7^th grades in primary school. In 2023, the theme of scrutiny was “We generate energy”. The children were taught about energy-related issues and were assigned to come up with innovative solutions to the aforementioned topic. Approximately 40 municipalities and 13 000 schoolchildren participated.