It’s Getting Hot In Here

The World Youth Forum in advance of the G8 Summit has just concluded; it was an amazing weekend for sharing best practices, planning for future campaigns and taking action on the spot. Organized by the Japan Youth G8 Project, A SEED Japan, and the Japanese Youth Ecology League, the summit brought together close to 250 youth - over 200 from across Japan and about 20 from overseas.

The conference was held in order to provide youth input into the upcoming G8 Meeting on climate change. The negotiations are anticipated to reinforce false solutions of CCS and all together ignore the need for mid-term targets, so the young people here felt it was essential to make our voices heard and encourage bold leadership. The statement adopted at the conference included calls of banning construction dirty energy facilities, supporting green employment, and recognizing human rights, but the most relevant point was:

In order to avoid dangerous and irreversible effects of climate change we urge the G8 to set a goal of stabilizing CO2 concentration at 350 ppm in order to avoid a global temperature increase of 2Cº above preindustrial levels. To achieve the above long-term target, it is critical that the G8 leads the world to reduce greenhouse gas emission by at least 40% of 1990 level by 2020. We demand Japan and G8 countries take us to a strong post 2012 agreement in 2009 under the UN Climate Process.

The statement was presented by an international panel of youth at a roundtable discussion with representatives of the Japanese Ministry of Environment and Foreign Affairs and it will be taken with the youth to the actual summit to be included in their actions and protests.

In addition to crafting and advocating for our statement, we took the time to learn from each other about our campaigns, so that we could share best practices and strengthen all of our efforts. We heard from Christian from the European Youth Alliance for Future Energy and Raju from Global Young Greens about their efforts to network youth from dozens of countries and organize coordinated campaigns. On the more local level, Midori from Eco-League Japan told us about what the 300 chapters of the organization are doing to promote campus sustainability. I had the opportunity to speak about the Campus Climate Challenge and Power Shift 2007, and everyone present was relieved to hear that the youth climate movement in the U.S. is thriving and pushing our government to finally take action on global warming.

With all of the hyperlinks above, you’ve probably got the sense that a global youth movement is brewing. Everyone at this summit was pumped to find ways to continue working together and we are thinking hard about how to coordinate grassroots action across seas to demonstrate the power of youth and our demands for climate solutions. We all felt the sense that if we come together, and work together, we will be stronger and more effective. The next couple of months will be dedicated to making it happen.