Day One of 'Espaces Generations Climat'

Going into the public space, Climate Generations, at COP21 I didn't really know what to expect. The only thing I did know is that I had one event at 13:00 that I needed to attend. This event, #YouthPower: Role of Children and Young People in tackling Climate Change, focused on what youth around the world are doing. To clarify, youth represents from what I observed those under 30. In my research prior to our trip to Paris I had been defining youth as 25 and under, but given what was considered to be youth at the conference I will be referring to those under 30 for the remainder of the blog posts.

I made two main observations at this event: youth are optimistic and they want to be taken seriously. This event was lead by a panel of only young people who lead the discussions assuring the event stayed on a timely basis. This was a theme across all panels in the Climate Generation space, crunched for time. Those running the panel introduced many youth who came up form the front row to give their experiences and solutions for their own community. The panel was kicked off by a girl from San Francisco who gave a spoken word performance on the topic of youth and climate change. It was short, but it was very effective in getting the crowds full attention.

Following the spoken word, two UNICEF Ambassadors came up to talk about their local experiences and what they have successfully done with their peers in their community to combat climate change. The first was a girl from Malaysia who looked to be about 15 or 16 years old, although I couldn't say for sure. Her and other students worked to create digital maps in order to connect with other communities internationally. This allowed for her community to discuss what has been successful with other communities in south east Asia and eventually helped them implement multiple wells in her village as well as neighboring villages. The second youth ambassador was a young man from Zambia. He seemed very nervous, but what he did was created a group of young students to assist the farmers in his village who were unable to keep up with the needed crop growth. This mainly included physical labor that the farmers couldn't accomplish on without the help of other people.

Many other youth spoke about their communities, but it was clear that despite the circumstances of each speaker, they all seemed to have stories of success. They all, in one form or another, expressed the importance to share their successes with other youth around the world as the driving force as to why they attended COP21 in Paris.