3 Takeaways from the First-Ever Youth Climate Action Summit
By +SocialGood Connector James da Costa
A day after 4 million climate strikers came together in cities across the globe, including hundreds of thousands of young people opting to skip school to take to the streets, youth leaders gathered at the United Nations to demand radical action on climate change. As part of the United Nations General Assembly week (UNGA), the UN hosted the first Youth Climate Action Summit, inviting 500 young activists and entrepreneurs to take part in the meeting at the United Nations Global Headquarters.
“We young people are united and unstoppable.”
The goal of the summit was to provide young people who are driving climate action with a platform to showcase their solutions and voice ahead of the Climate Action Summit, which convened world leaders on the “defining issue of our time,” as put by UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth Jayathma Wickramanayake.
I was lucky enough to be a part of the summit — here are my 3 key takeaways:
- Young people are taking a seat at the table and we are here to stay
Greta Thunberg opened the summit — “we showed we are united and young people are unstoppable,” referencing the climate strikes on Friday 20th September and went on to tell world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit on Monday “we will never forgive you” if they don’t take the action that is required.
Indeed, world leaders such as Angela Murkel did appear to listen, “we have all heard the wake-up call of youth”, as the German government aims to become climate neutral by 2050. Young people, now that they have been given a voice, are beginning to hold leaders accountable and will not give up their space. By the end of the Climate Action Summit, 65 countries had announced efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and dozens of businesses said they would aim to abide by the Paris Agreement targets.
Despite positive words, more is to be seen on tangible policy and actions. At the same time, the summit highlighted that freedom of expression for young people around the world must be upheld — many young activists have faced retaliation, violence and arbitrary arrests for their activisms.
Activists and leaders from across all sectors came together with the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J Mohammed to pledge their commitment to a super year in 2020, to drive a Decade of Action.
2. Entrepreneurship will be key to addressing the climate challenge
Entrepreneurship was in the air at the youth summit, as seen in the entrepreneurial approach of many young people to convene resources and other activists towards getting critical mass to put pressure on business and government leaders on climate action. This entrepreneurialism extended to real products, services and technologies developed by young people to take on the crisis in the Summer of Solutions pitch session and the showcase of the winners from the Reboot the Earth Hackathon.
Summer of Solutions was launched this summer enabling young people to pitch tech-based solutions to tackle climate change across climate information, circular economy and ethical fashion. Wikilimo, an app for smallholder farmers with little or no connectivity to access hyper local weather information through crowdsourcing information, won the pitch competition and will go on to receive funding and support form the UN Youth Envoy.
3. There is no debate when it comes to climate change — it’s a basic fact
Young people also leaned on science to drive home the urgency of action that is needed. Climate change is not a debate. The climate crisis is a fact. It’s not an opinion. It needs action today — especially for poor, marginalised communities who will be adversely affected. “Let’s stop asking world leaders to listen to science, lets demand world leaders act on science” Bruno Rodriguez proclaimed at the opening of the summit with the Secretary General. Article 12 of the Paris Agreement calls for Climate Education. But still in many parts of the world this is not implemented and information about climate change is not available for students. This needs to change.
The dwindling lack of climate ambition in leaders today was highlighted no more so than by Pita Taufatofua, Tongan “50% of my country was wiped out in one night. People haven’t acted yet.”
The Olympian called out the hypocrisy in how the world reacts to climate disasters while speaking at the UN Youth Climate Summit.
Conclusions: Climate Change is inter-generational and we must all work together.
The Youth Climate Summit was not only about a gathering for climate, but it was a platform to bring together stakeholders across generations, geographies, and interests to build strong partnership towards SDG 13 (Climate Action) and a sustainable future.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed helped to close the summit in the inter-generational town hall, “your generation is leading on climate action” and raising awareness on the climate emergency “in a way that was impossible to imagine just over a year ago.”
People of all generations must work together.
