Largest-ever climate change youth gathering to call for action in Copenhagen

Friday, 31 July 2009 08:19

Emerging leaders representing three billion people – the children and youth of the planet – will converge on the Republic of Korea to voice their demands for action on climate change at the Copenhagen meeting in December.

The Tunza International Children and Youth Conference, which takes place in Daejeon, Republic of Korea, on 17-23 August, will be the biggest youth gathering on climate change before the UN climate conference in December.

This will be a key opportunity for the more than 800 participants from over 100 countries to demand that their governments reach a scientifically-credible and far-reaching new climate agreement in Copenhagen.

By staking their claim to a low-carbon, resource-efficient, environmentally-sustainable future, the generation that will inherit the planet will also remind the world that they have the greatest stake in the creation of the green economy of tomorrow.

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said: “The Tunza Children and Youth Conference is an important gathering of young people and an opportunity for them to discuss and to prepare their positions surrounding Copenhagen and climate change, but it is more than that. It is a gathering of the generation that will inherit the outcome of the decisions taken in December and beyond.”

“For it will be in the lifetime of the three billion children and young people alive today that the glaciers of the Himalayas will either persist or melt away; that the sea levels will stabilize or rise, swamping a third of Africa’s coastal infrastructure; that the Amazon will remain the lungs of the planet or become an increasingly dried-out and disappearing ecosystem, and the polar bear will continue as the iconic species of the Arctic or, like the Dodo and the dinosaurs, merely an artifact in the world’s natural history museums,” he added.

Highlights of the Tunza Children and Youth Conference include a ‘Global Town Hall’, which will use state-of-the-art technology to link the gathering to hundreds of other young environmental leaders who will be meeting around the globe – from Nairobi to Sao Paulo and from Stockholm to Bangkok – to agree on a message to deliver to world leaders.

The conference will also feature the 'Seal the Deal! Global Debate’, which will bring together high-level figures from politics and green activism, including Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo, UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner and prominent environmentalists such as David de Rothschild (who will sail a boat made of reclaimed plastic bottles to the Pacific Garbage Patch), Roz Savage (who has rowed across oceans to raise green awareness), and Luo Hong (who raises green awareness through photography) along with young activists.

The Daejeon gathering will also see the launch of a social network platform for youth on climate change – my.uniteforclimate.org – and a Google/YouTube debate on climate change that will continue online until the Copenhagen meeting in December. It will also feature the awards ceremony for the winners of the UNEP 2009 International Children’s Painting Competition on the Environment.

The participants were selected from thousands of applicants based on their outstanding green achievements on their home turf – and the impressive range of initiatives illustrate just how much today’s children and youth understand and want to commit to the environment.

The Children and Youth Conference is part of the global UN-wide ‘Seal the Deal!’ campaign being spearheaded by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to galvanize political will and public support for reaching a comprehensive global climate agreement.

Over the coming months, the 'Seal the Deal!' campaign will mobilize over one million young people to march across one hundred capitals and deliver to global leaders the declaration of priorities on climate change agreed to at the Tunza Conference.