Role of Young People in the Fight Against Climate Change.

According to UN reports, there are 3.5 billion people under 30 living on the planet, that makes half of the population. 1.8 billion people are adolescents or early adults, ranging from the age of 15 to 24. Half of all youth reside in the developing countries. Our world has never seen so many young people. Following the international saying, “children are the future”, then, youth is the present. Apart from being the most well-educated generation in all history, with the highest numbers when it comes to literacy, entrepreneurship, social engagement, etc., young people, regardless of their nationality, face one common problem: Climate Change.

“If we let them, young people will be the world’s
most powerful solution.” — Denise Dunning

As stated by the Stockholm Resilience Center (SRC), a Swedish research center focused in socio-environmental resilience, climate change along with other major problems account for the 9 Planetary Boundaries — a group of quantitative planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. Crossing these boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. The bad news is: we are crossing the threshold faster than what we thought. Recent evidence published by the SRC show that we have reached a point at which the loss of summer polar sea-ice is almost certainly irreversible. Sea level rise is a growing concern, especially for small islands nations, like Fiji, Maldives, or Tuvalu. The latest IPCC reports indicate that we are not on track to reach the 2ºC goal agreed upon the Paris Agreement. Youth is and will be directly affected by all the changes that happen in the environment. That makes it the perfect group to take the lead towards developing solutions to tackle Climate Change.

Read the story from Medium by Thales Dantas - “Role of Young People in the Fight Against Climate Change.”

Fossil fuel lobby could be forced to declare interests at UN talks

A push from developing countries to force fossil fuel lobbyists taking part in UN climate talks to declare their conflicts of interest has won a significant battle against resistance from the world’s biggest economies including the European Union, US and Australia.

A Shell oil refinery. Ecuador and Venezuela wants groups
 that represent companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil,
BP and BHP to declare their conflicts of interest.

The UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) has agreed to enhance “openness and transparency” for outside parties and will accept submissions from any stakeholder – which could be any person or group affected by climate change or climate change policy – on how it could do so.

“The result was pretty good – understanding that the world’s largest economic powers were adamantly opposed to anything to do with integrity or conflict of interest at all,” said Jesse Bragg from Corporate Accountability International, which has been running a campaign on the issue.

Read Michael Slezak’s story on The Guardian - “Fossil fuel lobby could be forced to declare interests at UN talks.”

U.S. commits $100bn a year by 2020 to fight climate change in developing countries

Yesterday, the US announced that by 2020, they would invest $100 billion per year to help developing countries fight climate change.

India and the US committed themselves to the new agreement in a joint statement, which took place during the Second India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in New Delhi.

Both countries also re-announced their commitment to ratify the Paris Agreement.

Within the statement, the two nations “reiterated their commitment to pursue low greenhouse gas emission development strategies in the pre-2020 period and to develop long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies.”

Read the ClimateAction story - “US commit $100bn per year by 2020 to fight climate change in developing countries.”

All eyes on the signing, ratification and implementation of Paris agreement

Now that the Paris Climate Change Agreement has been clinched, all eyes are on the signing, ratification and implementation of the agreement. Key to its effective implementation are the national climate action plans submitted by countries ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference last December.

The plans specifically of developing countries can and must be supported by mechanisms such as the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) to effectively allow the world to transition to a low-carbon and resilient economy.

One hundred and sixty one national climate action plans, also known as intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), have so far been submitted by governments across the world. In these contributions, covering 95 per cent of all nations, each country provides its own vision for low-emission and climate-resilient development.

Read the NAMA News story - “Moving ahead with NAMAs in the context of Paris Agreement.”