Taking action costs nothing more than a little goodwill and effort. Cycling is a gentle form of activism, says the initiator of the COP31 Bike Ride

At the beginning of August, Prague joined the cities sending a letter to the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, highlighting the importance of sustainable mobility. It did so thanks to Dutch activist Jolein Schorel, who coordinates an international bike ride involving tens of thousands of kilometres, thousands of participants and hundreds of associations and organisations. She spent two days in Prague. In addition to letters from city authorities, the cycling relay is taking ten proposals to the summit on how to integrate cycling into climate policies.

This is the third time the relay has travelled to the summit. Where did the idea for the COP Bike Rides come from?

It’s not actually such an original idea. Many initiatives have been travelling to COP summits with their own agendas for years. I was inspired by a group of cyclists I joined on the way to COP in Glasgow five years ago. The other initiator was frustrated by the lack of cycling measures in his home city. And when people with a similar mindset come together, things start to happen…

So this year will be your sixth time going?

No. We started this particular project at COP29, then travelled to COP30 last year, and this year is our third edition.

How do you bring together the people who take part in the cycling relay?

Sometimes it’s very simple – they just tell each other about it… (laughs). First, we try to find someone in each country who likes the idea, is willing to support it and has a network of people around them. That person then becomes the coordinator for their country. In Italy, for example, there’s a very strong cycling community around FIAB (Federazione Italiana Ambiente e Bicicletta, editor’s note). We got in touch with Jacob, who is one of the “cycling mayors”; cycling mayors from cities across Italy are part of the same organisation. He ended up getting pretty much the whole country involved. Sometimes, though, it’s difficult to find the right person. But everyone who has joined us so far wants to take part again next year. We also hear from people who have learned about the relay from someone else and want to join in too.

So at the beginning, you don’t actually know how many countries will join you?

What we do know is where we’ll start and where we’ll finish. Those are the locations of the conference. We then plan a possible route and look for an organiser in each country along the way. We work with them to plan the best route into the neighbouring country. And then we simply find a way to connect any side routes that want to join us.

What personally motivates you to devote so much time to this “mission”?

I keep asking myself that too… (laughs). I grew up with the idea that first you study, then you work, and eventually things around you will somehow get better. But they improve very slowly… About 15 years ago, when we started spending our holidays cycling, I began to realise that cycling could also be a gentle form of activism – something that virtually anyone can do, including me. And what we are trying to achieve should be reflected in political decisions and policies more broadly.

I’m concerned about our environment and the problems connected to it, such as the heatwaves we’ve experienced this year, which I think we’re all feeling. In the Netherlands, cycling is one of the transport options people are free to choose, and I now realise that this isn’t the case everywhere. It would be good if that changed.

Welcome in Prague

But taking part in a journey like this is demanding in terms of time and money…

Yes. But it’s also wonderful. Not always, of course. But most of the time, it is. It’s lovely to be here, to talk to you, and to meet like-minded people all over the world. You could almost think of it as a holiday, even though we have to stick to a schedule to make sure everything goes according to plan. And cycling itself is great.

So is this your holiday?

I’m lucky enough to work as an independent sustainability professional, so I’m my own boss and I can afford to do it. I’m something like a programme manager, advising households on how to live more sustainably. So if I plan my work carefully, I can take a trip like this.

And who came up with the ten proposals you’re taking to COP31?

They were developed during the first year of our project, when we cycled from Paris to Baku. A group of experts came together in France and drafted the proposals. We then consulted them with local authorities and other experts along the way. So that first ride was also about fine-tuning their final wording so that they could be applied internationally, in different countries.

What’s interesting is that although they are specific, they’re also broad enough to be adapted to the particular circumstances of each country. They resonate in South America and across Africa, too. The way they are implemented may vary from country to country, but the proposals themselves speak to people everywhere. And I think that’s what makes this project so special: so many people from different countries can agree on them unanimously. I really love that.

What kind of response have you had so far?

At first, it was pretty crazy. Nobody knew who you were. Maybe someone had seen you on social media, but that was about it. In the first year, we basically tried to get our banner in front of anyone who showed even the slightest bit of interest. And everyone told us that cycling was a local issue, not something for the international stage.

Our response was that there is no such thing as local transport, because transport is always about getting from one place to another. It connects places – that’s its very nature. Last year, we started collecting letters from individual cities, and in the end we had 200 of them, which we delivered to the president of the summit.

Transport means of the future

Did you get any response?

No. I thought they might at least reply to the city authorities, but they didn’t. So we’re hoping maybe this year.

I assume you’ll be doing it again next year…

Next year’s climate conference will be in Ethiopia, and it’s quite unusual that we already know the host country this far in advance. Normally, it isn’t announced until November. So getting all the way to Ethiopia will be a major challenge. But we’re already working on it.

So yes, we’ll try to be there. Things are much more complicated in Africa than they are here, though, and we’ll need to organise an even greater level of support to make sure the ride is open to everyone, not just those who can afford to take part. We still need to work out whether we’ll have enough time to organise everything. But I believe we can make it happen.

This year, the whole relay covers 22,000 kilometres, right?

Even more than that. So far, we know that more than a thousand people will take part, but that’s not the final number. It could be 1,300, 1,400 or even more. People are joining from different directions.

Last week, for example, we realised that it’s not easy for people in Germany to simply take time off work – they have to plan their holidays almost a year in advance. So we’re lucky that we already know about Ethiopia. Otherwise, it would be impossible to plan properly.

You learn these little practical things as you go. We wouldn’t have succeeded on the ride from Paris to Baku if we had waited until everything was confirmed.

A banner traveling all the way to Antalya

How so?You just have to get started and build the whole project as you go. It can also serve as a metaphor: if we don’t start doing things, trusting one another and working towards making them happen, it will simply be too late. Just five days before COP29 began, we received permission to cross the border into Armenia. If we had waited for that permission in France, we wouldn’t have made it in time. So we simply set off and hoped everything would work out.

When we were in Utrecht last month, local experts on cycling and sustainable mobility told us exactly the same thing. You just have to get started somehow, and then you can begin to move things forward…

Yes. Exactly. Start doing something. Talk to people about your ambitions and the obstacles you’re facing. An opportunity will come along. It may be different from what you had imagined, but there will be one. And then you either rethink your ambitions or find a way to overcome the obstacles.

Otherwise, nothing would ever change. And taking action costs you nothing more than a little goodwill and effort.

Document about COP29 Bike Ride 

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