Why I Wanted Padova to Have Its Own Climate Action Week

The idea for Padova Climate Action Week was born far from Padova—around 1490 kilometers away, to be exact. Last June, I was in London during their Climate Action Week, where for an entire week, the city was buzzing with all kinds of events all focused on one topic: acting on the climate crisis. Everywhere I went, I found roundtables, workshops, talks, informal meetups, cultural events—all speaking the same language: what can we do, concretely, starting now?

I have been to many climate meetings and conferences, but what struck me most about the London Climate Action Week (LCAW) was not the scale, but the approach.

LCAW is not a big, top-down conference designed by a handful of large organizations. It is a bottom-up platform: a common banner under which very different actors such as NGOs, universities, businesses, grassroots groups, public institutions and citizens—both from within and outside of London—can propose their own events and connect to each other. That diversity created something powerful: a real concentration of climate action, creativity and passion in one place and time. Multiple paths, oftentimes converging, sometimes diverging but running parallel toward the same goal.

Coming back home, I kept thinking: if this works in London, why not in Padova?

The city is an important university hub, surrounded by a dynamic industrial region and close to fragile territories that are already under pressure. We have all the ingredients: research, innovation, active civil society, engaged administrations and businesses that are already working on the transition, as well as citizens and groups who could not care less—to put it mildly—but therefore hold the seeds for transformation. What we were missing was a shared moment dedicated to our city to bring these energies together and make them visible, connected, and more effective.

Padova Climate Action Week was created exactly for this reason: to offer a common home to those who are already doing a lot, and a stepping stone to those who want to start getting involved.

For one week, we want the city to become a crossroads where projects meet, where those who work on mitigation talk to those who work on adaptation, where finance meets activism, where institutions listen to young people and vice versa.

My hope is that, year after year, Padova Climate Action Week will help us shift from isolated initiatives to a living ecosystem of collaboration. Because facing the climate crisis is not about a single project or a single sector; it is about building alliances and multiplying the impact of what each of us is already doing.

This is why we started Padova Climate Action Week. Not to add yet another event to the calendar, but to create a platform where not only the city but the entire country, in all its diversity, can come together around a shared purpose: turning good intentions into concrete, collective action.