The proof is in the pudding!

Katie takes part in the second DECC Youth Advisory Panel pilot session.

DECC's commitment to young people and our futures was truly established for me a week ago, as I was invited to attend the second pilot session for the Youth Advisory Panel. The fact that DECC are willing to give up almost an entire day to listen to what young people have to say and assure us that the Youth Advisory Panel is a priority for the current Government really fills me with hope.

The day kicked off bright and early, with a lengthy discussion about the purpose of the panel, how the panel members would be selected, the role of individual members and how DECC can support us, and these ideas were then presented to Ed Miliband. Whilst the details are still to be confirmed, here are the key messages that I took away from the day:

The DECC Youth Panel represents the youth voice to DECC, particularly in ensuring the long term impacts of policy are sound, safe and agreed to by the future generation. It aims to:

• Hold DECC accountable to youth stakeholders
• Advise on how to work with and engage young people
• Where appropriate, and where agreed by the youth panel, to proactively engage with wider youth audiences

In the afternoon we discussed DECC's Consultation on Skills for the Low Carbon Economy, which is looking at the skills needed to meet the UK's targets for 2020 (reduction of 34% in greenhouse gas emissions) and for 2050 (reduction in at least 80% in greenhouse gas emissions). Key areas of the economy that were identified include:

• Decarbonising power
• Decarbonising transport
• Decarbonising buildings, construction
• Decarbonising supply chains across the entire economy
• Climate change adaptation

Our discussion mainly focused on the need to encourage more young people to choose a low-carbon career. We learnt from David Kidney that there will be up to 70,000 jobs available in the wind industry alone, and therefore teachers and career advisors have a key role to play in getting this sort of information across and telling young people that there is a long-term, sustainable and worthwhile career in helping Britain's transition into a low carbon economy.

The DECC Youth Panel will not meet again until after the General Election, providing that the party that wins still gives the panel a thumbs up. But until then, we're all busy drafting reports from the meeting and making the most of our newly established connections with young climate leaders from across the country!

Katie x

David Kidney: Looking Good

Meeting with David Kidney was a great opportunity for us, the Copenhagen 4, to tell The Under Secretary of State for Energy and Climate change about our experiences in Copenhagen. Incidentally, is was also a marvellous opportunity to see inside the Houses of Parliament, in the ‘canteen’ – if I can call it that with oak panelling and the iconic green leather of the House of Commons, anyway, let’s just say it was a far cry from my school canteen! our meeting was informal but informative. I left the meeting feeling both positive and reassured that out government really does want to listen to us. It was also great to know that Kidney had read the manifesto from the Children’s Climate Forum – ‘What’s up COP?’ and agreed with all that was outlined, saying it was ‘fantastic’ how we had looked at adaptation as well as mitigation.
From our meeting we were hoping to share all that we had gained from the forum, especially how all the delegates came together with the goal of trying to safeguard the planet for future generations- not out of self-interest. Kidney was pleased by this and said how he felt that politicians had a thing or two to learn from us- something that Kidney assured us he would feed back to Ed Milliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

The main points of discussion from our meeting were:

• The role of civil society, maintaining the momentum built in the run up to COP15, ensuring Mexico delivers all that was promised of Copenhagen.
• The role of young people in the Climate Debate and the example of global co-operation they set at the Children’s Climate Forum in Copenhagen.
• The DECC, Department of Energy and Climate Change Youth Panel; Luke, Katie and Kidney came straight from sitting on the panel to the meeting. The plan being to get a panel set up and cemented before the general election.
• The Robin Hood Tax (click to support)- this was something Kidney supported, his only concern being that the funds gathered would be allocated to too many projects, one of these being Climate Change.
• Climate scepticism, Kidney reassured us that while there will always be criticism the government is trying to promote greater transparency from scientific bodies to help reassure the public that climate change is a very real danger that is imperative we deal with.
  
  Overall, Kidney’s message was that of a positive one and that by the time we come to Mexico the World should be in a much stronger place to reach a legally binding consensus. Additionally, ever since December more and more countries have been signing up to the Copenhagen Accord- showing political willingness and progress.
  
  The message is: We must continue to lobby, campaign and overcome climate change scepticism but things are starting to look up. We must keeping going. We must keep believing.

'Make the change- show that you care'.

Cressie
XXX

UNICEF HQ through the eyes of an Article 12 Advisor

I’m Evie and recently was appointed an Article 12 Advisor to UNICEF UK’s Child Friendly Communities initiative. Along with 5 other people from Britain, I will be working with UNICEF in 2010 to implement the initiative among British towns and promote a ‘child-friendly’ approach in all communities. Recently, I went to New York City with my family and was lucky enough to visit the headquarters of UNICEF on the last day of my visit.

I spent most of my visit with Cristina Gallegos, who runs the UNICEF Voices of Youth website, and she showed me around the building. The first thing that struck me was the size of the building and the amount of people who worked there – it’s incredible how many people work there, and how much all of these people genuinely care about children is a really positive thing to remember.

The Voices of Youth website is a great forum for young people to discuss issues that relate to them and that they care about – these range from AIDS awareness and the Junior 8 summit to children’s rights and media coverage, along with hundreds of other topics. All the conversations are logged and recorded, as a way of integrating young people’s views into projects. For example, a document was published called A World Fit for Us, which used stories and comments from the VOY forums to explore the impact of the UN Special Session on Children in 2002. The VOY site also carries news items and themes to inform and initiate discussions among the thousands of young people who use it.

I really enjoyed my visit, and extend my sincerest thanks to Cristina Gallegos for showing me around and to Matthew King for helping us to organize the visit. I’d love to return in the future!

Evie xo

Follow the Article 12 Advisors and Child Friendly Communities on Facebook.

PHOTOsynthesis: US Climate Change Legislation, One Picture at a Time

The main picture for the campaign. It does make me look a bit like God, cradling the world in my hand... perhaps a bit arrogant!

PHOTOsynthesis is a campaign I’ve made with a friend from the US delegation to the Children’s Climate Forum, Becca. In the US, a bill that will reduce America’s emissions is trying to make its way through Congress. The US is one of the biggest emitters in the world, so urgent action is required to reduce its impact on the environment.

The idea of the PHOTOsynthesis campaign is to unite people around the world in expressing their wish for a strong climate bill in the US this year. There is a very real danger that it won’t even be debated in the Senate this year, let alone be passed as a strong first step on the road to decarbonisation.

All too often, countries act in response to climate change in terms of their own national interests. It is the aim of this campaign to give people the world over a voice in the US political system, so that we can perhaps remind one US senator that his or her vote is about more than just their citizens, but that this bill has far-reaching consequences for children and communities around the world.

At the moment, the campaign is based upon facebook (http://photopetition.notlong.com), which gives us a broad reach and should allow us to access large numbers of people across the world. The name ‘PHOTOsynthesis’ comes from the idea of bringing people together and using their photos as a more meaningful and emotive petition which we can then use in the US to lobby senators and decision-makers. On facebook, therefore, we are collecting all the ‘profile pictures’ of all the members of our group. The photos needn’t be climate-specific – they are just intended to give each and every signatory of our petition a unique and individual mark upon the campaign. They will then be collated into a (hopefully!) massive ‘photo petition’, a collage or a video which we can then spread around the world and send to loads of senators in the US.

Taking the fight to the US Senate

So the first stage is to gather as many members as possible – so join up and get loads of your friends to join too! Once we’ve shown that we’re serious with a large number of members, we will then (as we are already beginning to do) raise the profile of the group, and try to attract as much attention as possible on the campaign. We are also working on bringing it off facebook and giving it a dedicated web page - so look out for more news of it on Tagd! Once we have a date for a Senate debate, we’ll then mobilise our friends in the US to push it to their senators and their contacts to try to remind America that climate change is a global phenomenon, and therefore they have a responsibility to the global community to limit their impact upon it!

Thanks for reading and JOIN UP AND INVITE!!!

Luke

DECC Youth Panel

One of the discussions with Ed Miliband at the DECC Youth Panel pilot

On Tuesday 9^th February, I was fortunate enough to be able to take part in something which young people around the UK had been looking forward to for some time. The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has finally agreed to set up a ‘Youth Advisory Panel’, and, as one of the ‘Copenhagen 4’, I was given the opportunity to take part in a pilot session for this Panel.

Youth involvement in the climate issue is important for two reasons. Firstly, it is the young people around the world who are being hit hardest by climate change already – when drought decimates a family’s crop, it is the children who are forced to work the land harder; when rivers run dry it is young women and girls who are forced to walk ever further in search of water, and when disaster strikes the child victims are all too numerous.

Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, the decisions taken now will affect the world which we, as young people, inherit. DECC is launching a ‘Roadmap to 2050’ report this Spring, which sets out how the UK is going to achieve its 80% reduction in emissions by mid-century. Therefore they were keen to hear what we thought about how the UK should use its energy by mid-century.

At the meeting, we had a brief introduction about DECC’s plans, and then got into small groups to discuss what we wanted the world of 2050 to look like. There were about 15 young people between the ages of 16-25 from loads of different organisations, and it was great getting to know them all – it’s amazing just how many different groups are getting involved with youth climate activism! The best part of the day was when Ed Miliband walked in and we got to have a question and answer session with him: getting to miss a day of school for the meeting was fantastic, but meeting Ed was even better!

Ed with some even younger climate activists! (Image courtesy of DECC)

He was really friendly and open, and it was great to have his support: I think his presence was testament to his and his department’s commitment to the idea of having our input on DECC policy. There was, of course, a concern about the stability of the future of this Youth Panel, given the looming General Election. Who knows who will be sitting in Ed’s chair in a few months’ time, and who knows what they’ll think of our involvement? We’ll just have to wait and see…

We are now feeding back to them about the process and how we think it went. They seem very keen to continue the Panel and to make it as large a success as possible, which is really great news for all young people in the UK and around the world.

Keep reading this blog for updates on what happens next with the Youth Advisory Panel and for more about what the 'Copenhagen 4' are doing...

Thanks!

Luke

DECC Follow-up meeting to Copenhagen: What now?

At the Children’s Climate Forum, young people from around the world showed that it is possible to reach a strong, global consensus on climate change and asked world leaders to do the same at COP15. In many ways, the result was disappointing. There was no legally binding treaty, no global commitment for emissions reduction, no global framework for putting a price on carbon and not nearly enough recognition of the immediacy of the climate problem.

What we got instead was the ‘Copenhagen Accord’ – a non-binding agreement between a handful of the most powerful (and therefore also the most polluting) countries that agreed that something must be done to reduce global emissions, and agreed on a figure for financing for poorer countries over the next decade. This is barely a glimmer of what we had hoped for in the build-up to the conference, so many are asking why countries like the UK didn’t push the EU bloc to reject such a seemingly worthless piece of paper.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a meeting that the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) held on Monday 21st December as a follow-up to Copenhagen. In many ways, the UK government has acted very well in its response to the climate change threat – our national emissions targets are legally-binding and ambitious and the Government has been a driving force in making the EU a leading light in the climate change negotiations.

At the meeting, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined us by satellite link and made a statement about the outcomes of Copenhagen, and then took a few questions from the floor. Ed Miliband then did the same. A video of the meeting can be seen here. The audience was made up of many different people (including UNICEF!) who had been involved in working with DECC to make Copenhagen a success, and so it was a chance for the Government to thank us for our efforts and discuss what 2010 and the next decade holds for global climate action. Ed’s explanation for his support of the Accord was an interesting one: he pointed out that it does put into place $100 billion of climate finance by 2020 for poorer countries, and kick-starts the flow of this money within the next couple of years. Without the Accord, this finance would not exist and nothing meaningful would have come out of Copenhagen.

However, there is still a keen sense of despondency across many different organisations who had worked tirelessly for a decent deal. The big question is: what now?

After the massive build-up for Copenhagen, what now?

Without a doubt, we will soon be gearing up for another climate change conference at the end of 2010. Hopefully some of the momentum from Copenhagen will be maintained and the efforts of millions around the world may be effective in eventually producing the deal that we all aspire to. As young climate ambassadors, we, the Copenhagen 4, will still be doing fun stuff in our local communities to raise awareness of climate change, so keep reading our blog! We are also taking a leading role in using the connections made at the Forum to produce a youth reply to COP15 in the form of a written response and further campaign action.

May 2010 be what we hoped 2009 would be, and may the coming decade be the decade of global consensus and action.

Happy New Year!

Luke

Amidst the chaos, a deal emerges from Copenhagen. But is it the one we all hoped for?

US President Barack Obama (C left) speaks during a multi-lateral meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (R) and other leaders at the Bella Center in Copenhagen Photo: AFP

Over two weeks of talks, almost two years of planning and some 45,000 people took part in the UN climate summit in Copenhagen - the vast majority convinced of the need for a new global agreement on climate change.

Why then did talks break down in the final hours of the Summit and did the endless meetings achieve anything concrete?

While a promise to limit global warming to a 2C temperature was agreed upon by the majority of the international leaders, this agreement is not binding and does not set new greenhouse-gas reduction targets. Instead, countries are to set their own emission-reduction commitments, which would not be legally binding

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, and EU chiefs said the deal was a first step but acknowledged there was much further to go to get the ambitious and legally-binding treaty countries such as the UK have been pushing for.

More positively, by 2020, $100 billion “Copenhagen Green Fund” aid will help poorer countries halt deforestation and switch to greener technology. In the mean time, There will be $10bn (£6bn) a year "fast start" funding for the poorest and most vulnerable countries to protect themselves from the impact of drought and floods caused by global warming over the next three years.

What Next?

Britain is pushing hard for a legally binding treaty with clear targets to be laid out for the international community to commit to; however this will require another meeting of world leaders.

Meanwhile there will be pressure on the developed nations set their own carbon emission reduction target. The EU has offered to cut emissions by 20per cent from 1990 levels by 2020.

A meeting of all UN members' climate change negotiators is planned to be held in Bonn in June, and their annual conference is due in Mexico in December.

We asked Luke, one of our roving reporters and part of the UK delegation who took part in the Children’s Climate Summit, what he thought of the outcomes of the COP 15 talks.

Zaynin Kanji

Luke’s Response:

Through the Children’s Climate Forum the world’s youth demanded of world leaders a strong and fair deal to fix the climate. In too many ways, they failed us and the entire global community by missing the opportunity in Copenhagen to reach an ambitious global consensus on the issue.

We had hoped that Copenhagen would be the turning point in the fight against climate change by getting all countries to sign up to a deal which would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, provide financial help for poorer countries to cope with climate change and help reduce the destruction of forests around the world.

It was tremendously exciting in the weeks leading up to the conference to see governments come out with pledges for emissions reductions, and the news that world leaders would attend the conference raised the profile of climate change as a global issue to an all-time high.

The ‘Copenhagen Accord’, as it is being called, is disappointing in so many ways – it does very little compared to what we wanted the conclusion of COP15 to do. However, although it doesn’t live up to the expectations nor the needs of vulnerable children around the world, it DOES mean that $100 billion of climate-related aid will flow to developing countries by 2020. Without such an accord, there would have been yet another delay to getting this aid to the people who are being hit hardest by climate change.

Nonetheless, the weakness of the deal in terms of combating the root causes of climate change means that we all need to redouble our efforts to get our governments to act on global emissions in 2010.

As a follow-up to the Children’s Climate Forum, we are thinking hard about how we are going to maintain the tremendous pressure for action that was built up for Copenhagen. Hopefully our efforts and those of numerous other organisations and individuals will lead to the deal we needed in 2009 being reached in 2010.


Find Out More:

• Copenhagen Accord: Questions and Answers
• The Children's Climate Summit
• Visit Tagd and find out how you can help combat climate change