Young people like me and you. What can we do and how can we be empowered to get ourselves more involved in climate-related initiatives and to bring forth such empowerment to intergenerational scale?

Today, I have decided to attend this dialogue known as “Empowering a Global Generation of Young People”, a side event in COP21.

 

Highlights from Guy Ryder, a director-general of International Labour Organization

According to Ryder, in today’s world, there are ⅓ unemployment in the world are youth and parts of them lose their jobs due to the impacts of climate change. Yet, the climate impacts of today are not their responsibility but they are the ones bear most of the problems.

So, how can we improve this?

Ryder highlighted if we want to achieve low carbon societies, closing the gap with the skills we have and we need are priority for policy makers. He then maintained governments, employers and workers should come together to find ways to empower and enable the youth to use their spirit of innovation and creativity to produce the responses they need.

“It is imperative for us to look to the future, to empower youth to build areas of education that promotes creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.” said Ryder.

For instance, enterprises are encouraged to provide trainings to young people to become a solar technician and thus to increase skilled forces that promote clean energy. Also, he emphasized the importance of promoting, enhancing and endorsing climate education and trainings to young people as they are the people that need to adapt to uncertainties of climate in the future.

Highlights from Kabiito Denis, an agronomist/farmer in Uganda

Moderator: You are a young farmer yourself. What keeps you farming? A lot of people leaving farming for “greener pastures”

Dennis: In African context, many people leave agriculture because it stems from our family. My mom was a housewife and a poultry farmer. She always tell me to “go get a better job. Farming is tedious. Farming is for uneducated people like us.”

After coming from school as a young agronomist. I have that passion of farming. You can’t give advice to people unless you get your hands here. From doing it now, I can experience, if the season is unpredictable. I can get tailor made solutions because I can interact with nature and connect with the rural communities and bring them into one society all along the agricultural chains. I want to inspire. In most of Africa, we have young people who likes agriculture. It interest people from cities to head back to rural areas. We can help to develop rural areas via climate smart production. If we have good industry in production. We can attract back the youth.

Moderator: What is holding youth back? What would young people to claim that space?

Dennis: They are facing problem and they are not in the decision making process. They can’t move on. Youth have not been involved in other activities where elders are doing and this make them shy away. Making lesser income shy them away. The youth will shy away if income is low. Unless we increase the productivity. Having a decent life and agricultural product in the changing climate will attract youth.

Traditional system and lack of quality education. We are not part of the decision making process which will hinder us to become the agent of the change. We need this part and the system need to include us so we can fully be able to extend our capabilities, skill to get in.

Highlights from Vincent Bryant, Founder of Deepki

Moderator: Vincent, you are in the arena of startups, entrepreneurship, technologies. Can you share with us your opinion on empowering the young people?

Vincent: Let’s imagine you are living in 19th century in USA. You go to Pennsylvania to get decent amount of oil and earn dollars. Some of you will find, some of you would not. Two engineers will let you know where to find the oil based on geological analysis.

Today, story is not about oil but clean energies and “Big Data”. The First ingredient is “Data”. I believe you have all the data to promote energy efficiency.

Second ingredient is Predictive models. We built predictive model to resolve research on how much energy can be saved via a building and imply it to similar buildings. As a student, I am proud of using big data to put constriction of carbon footprint on campus and people. The government are not fast in doing so. Five most consumption measures can be measured from the existing datas.

Today, we have 17 employees (Average age: 29) in this 15 months old company. It is the value you create that is valuable will attracts the youth today. You create value to improve their comfort and save their expenses. It is easier to spread the word to other organization. I spend a lot of time meeting young people who has desire to work on meaningful topic. Not to work for regular industry who does not understand where the money go. If there is a desires, it is powerful to change people’s behavior and speed up the energy transition.

Highlights from Rogie Nichole Aquino, Sole4Souls Philippines

On the other hand, Rogie Nichole Aquino, a 20 years old youth from The Philippines is one of the youth who managed to put words into action. Rogie believes in taking action NOW than later. He made a recommendation in UNESCO to initiate his own projects (e.g. Sole4Souls initiative) in his home country as he hopes to inspire his fellow Filipinos.

Moderator: As a youth, What drives you to take action?

Rogie: Guilt. Youths are reckless. We do not know the affects that we do until the result is in front of us. Then, we will think “why didn’t I pursue this path?” After the guilt stage, I feel motivated to take the action as we need to start now. If not now, when? We all are the agent of change. We all have this responsibilities to make this happen.

Hence, we need to be Open-Minded: Do not stick to what we have done before. We need to be innovative, unity, work with all stakeholders and not to be stuck in the old way like how Governments in The Philippines – where they are stuck with their old political system with big main ideas that disregard others. We also need to stay committed in what we do. We all have the responsibility. We should all act now.

Closing of the event:-

The closing of this event is the most inspiring one when Veteran Negotiator – Former Minister at Republic of Congo arrived later to share his opinion on empowering young people.

H.E. Henri Djombo, Republic of Congo:

“Age does not define the keen sense of responsibility. Some kids mature later. You have old people stay young in their mind. Notions of young and old are subtle. This is the result of their education. They will always committed to causes. Educate the young. We have to support and empower them. It is not about the environment but also education. Give  them the tools they need.”

Written by: Jolene Journe T.