Snow of tomorrow | This is "POW Austria"

As described in Martin's last article, combating man-made climate change requires more than individualised, morally correct behaviour. It requires collective change that is triggered at various levels in order to ultimately have an impact at a political level. In this way, beyond the personal behaviour of people, politicians will be called upon to do something for a climate-friendly future for humanity. The aim should be to change the structural conditions that are the cause of the current climate crisis. Achieving this goal requires attention, both within and outside the ski community. For this reason, there are so-called "non-governmental organisations" (NGOs) whose goals are precisely this. NGOs are non-governmental interest groups that see their task at creating public awareness for their cause through activities and thus contributing to social change.

One NGO that has dedicated itself to the cause of climate protection and wants to draw more attention to it, especially in the outdoor sports community, is "Protect Our Winters Austria", or POW in short. Some readers may have heard of POW before, especially in many ski resorts and urban areas, POW uses stickers to attract attention and shows that environmental protection can also be aesthetic. Nevertheless, some people do not know what is actually behind the blue stickers with the snowflake, which is why we now want to explain the content of POW's work.

Martin wants to show why membership of POW is worthwhile and that they can do much more than just cool stickers and good social media content.

Members, the heart of every NGO, are the key basis of the various alliances. Only with the help of members can the convictions of POW be made accessible to a broad majority. Only in this way can networks be formed, structures established and change triggered. "Protect Our Winters Austria" has over 560 members, who also contribute to the funding with their annual membership fee. POW reaches over eleven thousand followers on its social media channels every day. This is important in order to communicate our concerns. Nevertheless, POW is more than just a movement on social media, as a look at some of the projects that emerge from the main topics of advocacy, mobility and education mentioned above shows.

Advocacy refers to campaign work. Grassroots initiatives such as petitions or email campaigns are used to enforce political framework conditions. One successful advocacy project from January 2023 was the "Your email for climate protection" campaign. The fact that Austria does not have an up-to-date climate protection law despite being obliged to do so by the EU was an opportunity to draw the attention of the responsible politicians to their failure to act. Over a period of six weeks, around 31,000 e-mails were sent to the environment spokespersons of all parties, the governors of the provinces, the ministers Gewessler, Totschnig and Kocher and the press spokespersons of the Federal Chancellery. In addition, around 2000 emails were sent to the President of the Chamber of Commerce during the same period. These contained the demand to stop blocking the climate protection law. Even if the politicians concerned were uninformed in their replies, a strong signal was sent from the population to those responsible.

Another main topic of "Protect Our Winters Austria" is mobility. Travelling to and from many mountain sports has the greatest impact on the environment. The aim is therefore to raise social awareness of sustainable mobility to such an extent that climate-friendly guidelines and laws become unavoidable and are implemented and supported by politicians. Various POW projects are helpful in this regard. In collaboration with the association Bahn zum Berg and the publishing house Kompass, POW published a Öffi-Wanderführer für Nordtirol [public transport hiking guide to north Tyrol], which has now been followed by an Öffi-Skitourenführer [public transport ski touring guide] just in time for the start of winter 23/24. Even if they do not provide the fundamental solution to the problem, the two books enable all mountain sports enthusiasts to plan their own tours in a more climate-friendly and cosy way in future.