At 3:30 pm I attended the Youth Environmental NGO’s strategizing session. An issue that came up immediately was the lack of diverse representation for youth here at the conference. The Youth Summit included people from around the world, and every effort was made to have as many different backgrounds and cultures as possible. The statement was then made that it is our responsibility as youth representatives to at least attempt to fully represent youth from around the globe. We may not succeed, and in fact it may be impossible to succeed because of the lack of experience of particular cultures, but it would be sad and shameful if we did not at least try to the best of our abilities.
So within saying that, we decided to first make sure we are at least connected with all the youth groups here at the conference (so far we are missing only 5 or 6). Second, we are going to push our media to new ends and involve as many people as possible in youth parallel events (through independent press, university societies, social hotspots).
Third, and perhaps most important, integrate issues of social justice in our daily “Tip of the Iceberg” newsletter. We identified this as an inherent issue to be integrated into all our events and projects; this issue is often ignored on the basis of ignorance. We see pictures of northern Canadian indigenous people suffering, and pictures of far away children as environmental refugees, but there is never any major action or direct focus on reversing this. (To add to that, we strongly feel that the Adaptation Track must be emphasized in this MOP – This is focused on Kyoto members helping people adapt to the intense devastation that is already occurring through climate change – particularly developing countries, and especially South Africa and Central America.)
The UNFCCC/ Kyoto Protocol must adopt social justice as a key consideration in all negotiations. The fact that we even have to deal with an Adaptation Track is disappointing and a disgusting result of so-called-developed countries activities; climate change has been predicted for so long that it is bewildering to me why it has taken this long for any type of international negotiations to occur on specifically working together to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
The good news is, this is happening now, and it has the potential, more than anything else on the table, to save us from ourselves.
