Youth Lead Global Change
By: Thuận Sarzynski
Tags: Youth, Nature, Sustainability, Climate Change, Environment

Youth Lead Global Change

With the right attitude, passion and heart any young person can lead without even realizing it

Recent events have shown to all the world that the youth is ready to take the lead in solving large scale environmental problems which older generations paralyzed by conflict of interests were too coward to address. Youth have gone on the street putting at risk their own personal life by missing school while striking for an effective climate change policy. Thanks to social media, the youth-led movement got organized and is still ongoing today.

Yesterday was the launch of the Youth4Nature movement. A youth led initiative bringing the voice of the youth at the table of policymakers to shake up the status-quo and address environmental issues. Youth4Nature believes that knowledge sharing, storytelling and capacity building is key to face current environmental and development challenges.

Photo by Josh Barwick on Unsplash

At the Youth4Nature’s launching webinar, Nathalie Seddon, Professor of Biodiversity at Oxford University, reminded youth leaders how effective are nature-based solutions to solve both climate change and biodiversity loss. Nature based solutions such as forest restoration or sustainable agriculture are crucial to address climate change as well as biodiversity loss and must be integrated to current policies at international but also local levels. Nature based solutions can provide up to 30% of CO2 mitigation needed by 2030 to stay under 2 degrees. Besides, world leaders have realized that the conservation of natural ecosystem can avoid economic loss. In fact, last year report of the Global Economic Forum highlighted that extreme weather events, and the failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change resulting from ecosystem degradation is a risk to human wellbeing and the world economy.

Nature-based solutions as defined by IUCN are “actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems, that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human wellbeing and biodiversity benefits.” Typically, nature-based solutions are simple to apply at a landscape level, produce equitable benefits for society and maintain biological and cultural biodiversity. They are built on many scientific evidences of the benefits provided by ecosystem services to human wellbeing. For example, the large-scale conservation and restoration of wetlands or forests prevent soil erosion, maintain water quality protect coastal communities (in the case of mangroves), protect biodiversity and store carbon.

This capacity of nature to mitigate climate change and assist human communities to adapt to the impact of a raising temperature and instable weather can be impaired by climate change itself. For example, droughts produced by global warming increase the chance of forest fires and cause coral bleaching. That is why well documented nature-based solutions must be understood and applied quickly by policymakers before climate change hinder their efficiency.

Nature-based solutions have gained traction in recent years and are very present in policy discourse like the New York Declaration on forests, the Paris agreement and Bonn challenge. As an example, the Paris Agreement noted “the importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems, including oceans, and the protection of biodiversity, recognized by some cultures as Mother Earth, and noting the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice’, when taking action to address climate change.” Although 66% signatories of the Paris agreement include nature-based solutions in their national determined contribution to reduce carbon reduction and mitigate climate change, there is disparity in the implementation with developing tropical countries leading the way mainly because of the low cost of nature-based solutions.

“We need to change our relationship with nature, recognize we are part of it that our health is linked to its health. We must change our behaviour and pressure our governments. Now is the time” concluded Ms Seddon.

On the ground, such high-level policies are implemented by training farmers to more sustainable farming practices and by protecting natural forests. For example, in Nigeria, Elujulo Opeyemi, a young leader part of the Youth4Nature network, promotes forest conservation and reaches farmers to explain them the threat of climate change. His organization in Nigeria promotes agroforestry by providing seedlings of fruit trees to farmer communities. In addition, the organization provides mentorship to projects promoting sustainability by identifying problems and preparing solutions as well as providing financial resources for implementation. Elujulo Opeyemi train young farmers to both make an income and use nature-based solutions to reduce the effects of climate change.

“Young farmers often have the knowledge about nature-based solutions for climate change, but they also want to get an income.” explained Elujulo.

At the Youth4Nature launching webinar, Saline Abraham, former president of the International Forestry Student Association and current Youth coordinator at the Global Landscape Forum, shared her experience as a youth leader. Through her experience as a leader she not only realized how powerful youth leadership can be, but also that training, mentoring and addressing youth specific needs are crucial to nurture their leading role.

“Nothing is special in one individual but power lays in coming together” stressed Salina.

As the new decade of ecosystem restoration will be kicked off in 2021 deciding on the global strategy for the future 10 years of ecosystem restoration, youth has a role to play and must participate in building grassroot restoration movements which benefit all society and mitigate climate change. The question is how do we get people to be leading and contribute to the development of sustainable agriculture practices and the empowerment of marginalized communities? Youth must have the right attitude, follow its passion and put its heart and soul into the challenge.

Photo by Bob Blob on Unsplash

Youth4Nature goal is to prepare youth to lead this movement of ecosystem restoration to mitigate climate change and build resilient communities. Youth4Nature will organize webinars, create an online platform to collect stories, videos and podcasts about youth-led initiatives using nature-based solutions to cope with climate change. Youth4Nature will train youth leaders to engage in international policy event so policymakers can see the youth as an active contributor proposing climate change solutions.