COY Day Three – MYD Leads Global Discussion on Climate Action

by admin | Nov 8, 2017 | #MYD, MYD2017, YOUNGO

Team Asia Youth

As part of the Asian Youth Climate Network (AYCN), the Malaysian Youth Delegation (MYD) co-hosted a session at the 13th Conference of Youth (COY13) on Youths Climate Action in Asia, which was participated by youths from various countries across the world. The session adopted a World Cafe format, and the participants were separated into four groups at different tables, whereby each group had a lead facilitator to facilitate the discussion. Every table had their own topic that revolved around climate action.

One of the MYD members, Azam, facilitated a table that discussed on ‘How Can Youth Educate the Public?’ It was really interesting to see the different views and perspectives contributed by the participants in interpreting the many ways to install education towards the public. Among the ideas that were brought up in the session included outreach via social media, capacity building workshops, upcycling programmes, sustainable fashion, responsible consumerism and creative ways in approaching the government.

For the wrap up, each tables were required to present the outcome or gist of their discussion. Azam enthusiastically presented on his table’s discussion and Mike volunteered to present on one of the table’s topic, which is ‘The Value of Youth’ – a topic that is crucial in many countries whereby youth are still having challenges in getting their voices heard, in terms of reaching out to the government, policy makers and the public.

Mike Leading Presentation

Putting being biased aside, this session on Youths Climate Action in Asia is one of the best sessions that I have attended as it is highly interactive and spurs up intellectual discourse. Learning on the programmes and movements in not only Asian countries like Taiwan, China, Korea or Japan, but European countries such as France and Germany from the participants attended, truly paints a bigger picture and making my see things in a new paradigm.

Azam Making a Point

The knowledge sharing session was definitely productive and I am glad that MYD played a vital role in getting the conversation going.

Written by Jasmin

Edited by Varun and Kelly

Group picture from the session

MYD spoke at Youth Day in Nordic Pavilion

by admin | Nov 8, 2017 | #MYD, MYD2017, YOUNGO

Today marks the 1st day (7th of November 2017) of the 23rd session of the Conference of Parties #COP23.

The Nordic countries had a joint pavilion under the auspices of Nordic Council of Ministers and they had set the thematic for the very 1st day of COP23, to be YOUTH DAY.

I was fortunate to be invited as a panelist for one of the session named “Youth and Climate Change”. The session served as a platform for us, the youth, to share our experience of climate change impacts, what paved our way to get empowered, and what we have done to combat climate change. The session had a well-balanced global south and global north representatives.

From left, Adam Leckius (PUSH SWEDEN), Fredrick Ouma, Matilde Solberg Clemesten (The Norwegian Youth Delegation), Thomas Lai (Malaysian Youth Delegation MYD)

After the sharing session, there was a breakout group discussion on four different topics. I moderated one of the discussion, which was based on the role of youth organisations at a national level to accelerate climate action.

The rendezvous was constructive and we managed to compile all ideas into four main roles that youth were able to contribute to speed up climate action:

• Education
• Collaboration
• Green Vote
• Gender Empowerment.

Education

Policy languages tend to be tough to digest as jargon can be widely found. Due to these predicaments, public easily get lost in translation and eventually lost interest in studying about it. Thus, it is really important to translate and convey the message into laymen terms – This is where youth can show its fortitude. It become easier to get the message across in a more meaningful and efficient way as the generation gap is minimal. When comes to creating awareness, nothing can beat the creativity of the youth.

Collaboration

Asides rendering criticism, youth can provide recommendation to the government in combating climate change. In order to provide constructive feedback, it is also vital for the youth to understand the governance of the country (i.e how Federal and State governments function). To enact this, we could encourage the government of the day to educate the public on the governance.

Green Voting

Climate change has become a mainstream issue. Given the fact that most of the people are already aware of this, the politicians may use this a platform to gain extra vote from the public. In order to hold their accountability, we the youth, have a role to play. Before the general election, the youth can gauge the politicians’ knowledge on climate change and/or environment issue (i.e renewable energy, mitigation, adaptation plan). After their manifesto are published, we can then analyse them and constantly follow up with the politicians on the promised they had made.

Gender Empowerment

Climate change is not gender biased as it affects everyone with women, who are the most vulnerable. Educating and empowering the female population can be one of the agenda for youth. During the discussion, William Horsu from Institute For Sustainable Energy & Environmental Solutions, points out a very important statement, which I completely agreed upon.

“When you educate a man, you educate a person. When you educate a woman, you educate the community.”

Enhancing the capacity building of women (not limited to guys as well) is a catalyst for development, which help boost countries with economy growth, socioeconomic development, and also keep environmental problem in check. Last but not the least, increasing the potential of adaptation would be required.

Written by Thomas

Edited by Varun

COY Day Two – Understanding Climate Negotiations from a Youth Perspective

by admin | Nov 8, 2017 | #MYD, MYD2017, YOUNGO

Understanding Climate Negotiations by Cli’Mates

I walked in a room where everyone was heavily engaged with the speaker. Notes of papers lying on the floor, indicated that I arrived slightly after the participants completed a group exercise, which was to arrange the various international agreements under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in a chronological order. I was moderately glad that I came a bit late, as I would confess of not really being an expert in the history of UNFCCC.

The climate negotiations revolves around UNFCCC, but until what extent do we really know about the UNFCCC? The session took a step back to reflect on the history of the UNFCCC, which began with the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). In 1990, the UNGA established the International Negotiating Committee (INC) for a Framework Convention on Climate Change. At the same time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released first assessment report, which stated that ‘emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas’. This in turn led to the second World Climate Conference for a global treaty.

Although it is known that the legal regime in addressing climate change has been around since the 1980s, it is not a well known fact that one of the driving force that pushes the General Assembly to put together a high level mechanism for climate change was actually a southern European island state in the Mediterranean, called Malta. Malta even presented a concrete proposal in the form of a draft solution, which was unanimously presented in the plenary of the General Assembly in 1988.

The ‘Maltese Initiative’ marks the origin of the UNFCCC, with the Conference of the Parties (COP) a the prime authority of the Convention. The text of the UNFCCC was adopted at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in May 1992, and opened for signatures at Rio Earth Summit in June 1992. The ‘ultimate objective’ was to curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. The UNFCCC also recognises that the climate system is largely affected by anthropogenic influences.

In the session, the speaker brought up that the UNFCCC highlights the importance of the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) principle and commitments, with mitigation being primary followed by adaptation, which was secondary. The UNFCCC greatly emphasised on mitigation measures. Even the EU’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) was largely focused on mitigation. It was not until Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) in 1998, that adaptation was mainstreamed into the UNFCCC process. There were several discussion surrounding adaptation, but were finally resolved in COP10, which was the Buenos Aires Programme of Work on Adaptation and Response Measures.

All these insightful information took about 30 minutes for the speaker to walk us through, with many of the youth in the room looking perplexed and clueless. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Learning the history of the UNFCCC requires perseverance, big time! 

References:

• https://books.google.de/books?id=XdgqAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT64&lpg=PT64&dq=bueno+aires+work+programme+on+adaptation+cop10&source=bl&ots=Dr1HpSTE_S&sig=9SZ7LDte1kzPonEC54GjRGrqosI&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwid5NXUjKbXAhXFChoKHXC0AMoQ6AEIWTAF#v=onepage&q=bueno%20aires%20work%20programme%20on%20adaptation%20cop10&f=false
• https://books.google.de/books?id=eUCL78-tC5sC&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=malta+UNGA+UNFCCC&source=bl&ots=Z_3P8sE06b&sig=whtGk7c1jlrj8k5O3e4HjG_QLgo&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjliaX_gKbXAhUDcBoKHfOnC8sQ6AEIYDAH#v=onepage&q=malta%20UNGA%20UNFCCC&f=false
• http://mra.org.mt/climate-change/climate-change-introduction/

Written by Jasmin

Edited by Varun

COYnnecting and COYllecting

by admin | Nov 7, 2017 | #MYD, MYD2017, YOUNGO

After three amazing days, COY13 came to a close. The 13th Conference of Youth, which took place from 2-4 November, serves as the annual pre-COP conference. This year’s conference saw 1,300 participants from 123 countries descend onto the sleepy city of Bonn. Since MYD 2015, there has been a mandate for Malaysian Youth Delegates to attend COY before each COP. Over the course of the past three days, I definitely saw the benefit to attending COY before starting our COP journey.

COYllaorating

I must admit that the pun “COYnnecting” is not an original one. The organizers of the conference used it as one of their official hashtags; I’m merely borrowing it and adapting it for “COYllecting”. With the presence of over a thousand youths from all across the globe, the COY venue, for three days, was transformed into the ultimate playground for like-minded, passionate, hungry and determined young people to teach, learn, and share their ideas and opinions on the topic of climate change.

Across the three days, there were over 200 talks, workshops and discussion sessions. These sessions were hosted to not just prepare youths for the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP23), but also to serve as a platform for young people to connect with other like-minded youth to share case studies, their work and even collect ideas to bring back to their respective countries. Azam, Jasmin, Lhavanya, Syaqil, Xiandi and myself from MYD attended COY, and I’m sure we were able to both contribute and collect thoughts and ideas from the sessions.

Fijians had a big presence at this year’s COY, considering their presidency at COP23

The mandate for MYD members to attend COY, is a necessary and justified one. Yes, our goal here in Bonn is to track UNFCCC negotiations at COP, but we need to remember that we’re not alone in our objective for promoting climate action and climate policy. There are hundreds of other young people from around the world who want the same thing as us, and connecting with them over the three days definitely helped in a few different ways:

• Networking and connecting with like-minded people from different parts of the world
• Collecting stories, experiences, case studies, plans, ideas and solutions that may be useful to local initiatives
• Participating in an honest, inclusive and constructive dialogue with the goal of pushing forward the conversation of climate action

Some sessions at COY13 consisted of presentations and talks that prepared youths attending the COP, running through crash courses on the processes as well as working groups within the UNFCCC, such as the Training on International Climate Negotiations hosted by CliMates. Other sessions were more about sharing the different challenges faced by youths concerned about climate change and what they are doing about it to come to a solution, such as the How to Negotiate for Your Values in a Local Community? workshop.

Appropriately illustrating the spirit at COY13

While I use the team playground for like-minded youths metaphorically, it really did feel like one. As I walked the halls of the school that served as the venue for the conference, I definitely felt that the vibe was a youthful and collaborative one. In reference to the title of this article, COY truly shines when the attendees organically do what the conference was built for – connecting with one another, and collecting ideas and stories. I feel that for any youth attending COP, it is absolutely necessary to join COY. It gives an appropriate amount of preparation for COP, while in an amazing one-of-a-kind environment.

Before COY I understood the importance of youth involvement in the climate change conversation. It wasn’t until after COY did I see it in action. The passion, hunger, intelligence and capabilities shown by the youth of the world in just three days gave me hope and even more drive to push the youth voice along. Power is currently in the hands of a completely different group of people, who may not care for the climate as much as we do. So until we are old enough to become decision-makers, we need to speak up and ensure our voices are continued to be heard.

Written by Mike

Edited by Varun