What Design Can Do has teamed up with Autodesk Foundation and IKEA Foundation to launch the Climate Action Challenge, a competition inviting designers to come up with proposals responding to climate change.

The Climate Action Challenge is a global design competition calling on designers for ideas to help people adapt to climate change. It was launched at the What Design Can Do (WDCD) conference in Amsterdam in May, for which Dezeen is media partner.

"The theme of our conference this year is climate change," explains WDCD founder Richard van der Laken, in a movie produced by Dezeen for Autodesk.

"We are launching the Climate Action Challenge, inviting designers from the whole wide world to come up with proposals around climate change."

The winners will be selected by an international jury to share an award package worth €900,000, which includes a production budget and an acceleration programme that will assist designers in developing their proposals.

The launch of the competition was supported by Autodesk Foundation, which helps organisations that use design for positive social and environmental impact, and IKEA Foundation, the philanthropic wing of the Swedish furniture brand.

Autodesk Foundation is offering support to the winners of the competition.

"We decided to support the climate action challenge in order to identify new innovations that will address climate change, both the causes and the consequences," explains Paige Rodgers, head of marketing at Autodesk Sustainability & Foundation, in the movie.

Past recipients of support from the Autodesk Foundation all attended WDCD Live to present their work.

These included Warka Water, which develops easily assembled wooden structures that harvest clean drinking water from condensation for rural communities; Nubian Vaults, which is reviving an ancient building technique to offer a viable solution for housing in sub-Saharan Africa; and Floatility, which is developing a sharing network of electric scooters to offer an environmentally friendly solution for short-distance transportation in city centres.

The competition is open to professionals, start ups and students. Participants have until 21 August to submit their ideas to the What Design Can Do website, where they will be generated a custom brief according to their chosen approach, topic and location.

Van der Laken describes climate change as "one of the most pressing issues of our time" in the movie. "We would like to urge you to participate," he says, "because it's important and we should act now.

This movie was produced by Dezeen for Autodesk.