The Round Britain Climate Challenge - a circumnavigation of mainland Britain by Sacha with a wind and green electricity-powered paramotor - will be launched at an event at the Glasgow Science Centre tomorrow (June 18).
Take-off is from the Glasgow area during the week of June 21. The exact location and date is weather dependent.
The 3,000-mile expedition will travel anti-clockwise around the country, ending back in Glasgow about six weeks later.
Among the places Sacha is due to land are the Eden Project near St Austell in Cornwall and locations for proposed future UK Eden Projects - Morecambe in Lancashire, Portland in Dorset and Dundee in Scotland.
The expedition is designed to inspire and excite the nation to get involved in tackling the climate crisis in the run up to the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow this November.
Sacha, famous for global expeditions with migratory species, turned her focus to climate change for this expedition after losing her family home in the Australian bushfires last year.
She will be landing frequently, talking with, filming, and gathering information from industry, innovators and entrepreneurs, local heroes, communities, schools, farmers and individuals – anybody involved in addressing the effects of climate change in their areas. A compilation of these stories will be presented at COP26.
Eden Project Co-Founder Sir Tim Smit said: “One of my heroes Muhammad Ali used to ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ as another of them, Sacha Dench, flies like a swan, stinging only with a tale of the challenges facing us.
“Tracing the entire coast of Britain in a pilgrimage to the natural world and our need to adapt and save it from the worst of climate change, landing to talk to people making a difference to a future that still remains ours to make.
“We find our country embarking on a course to a green enlightenment and Sacha wants to tell this story and expose the risks of not grasping the future.
“Eden and so many others stand behind her as a champion for our only planet home, hoping that her commitment will excite us into action to become citizens not consumers of the world.”
Sacha aims to set a new Guinness World Record for the fastest - and first - flight around Britain in a paramotor. It will also be a first for an electric paramotor.
She is aiming to set a second World Record.
To help people take impactful steps on climate, and measure their record-breaking effort, Sacha is inviting individuals everywhere to commit to take one (or more) of the 16 practical steps on count-us-in.org between June 18 and July 17.
To set the new World Record, 140,001 people must take a step, such as cutting down on food waste, or walking and cycling more. Count Us In is a global community of people and organisations taking practical steps to protect what they love from climate change before it is too late.
Count Us In’s mission over the next decade is to inspire 1 billion people to significantly reduce their carbon pollution and challenge leaders to act boldly to deliver global systems change. More on count-us-in.org.
Sacha said: “It’s great to have the support of Tim and the Eden Project and I really look forward to seeing the great work the team are doing when I land at ‘Edens’ around the country.”
She added: “Along with testing the capability of electric flight, and challenging what we think is possible, I want to capture the imaginations of the young and old, rural and urban, and focus on answers to the climate crisis – not problems - and encourage everyone, to get involved.
“We’re trying to answer the question Britain drove the Industrial Revolution, can we drive the Green Revolution too?
“As well as investigating how climate change is affecting different regions of the country, we will be showing – in a visually stunning and exciting way - what is happening to help cut carbon and preserve and restore our environment. We’ll be finding the likely and unlikely heroes and discovering where and what works.”
