Global Youth Forum on Climate Change 2020 on 16-18 December

Youth play an important and unique role in mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. They can and do contribute to promoting sustainable and environmentally-friendly practices, conserving and restoring the environment and ecosystems, and implementing adaptation and mitigation action. 

Therefore, it is important to ensure that youth are involved at all levels of climate action, including formulating, implementing, and monitoring and evaluating interventions related to addressing climate impacts. This includes negotiation processes as well as policy and planning processes at the local, national, and global level. 

Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement highlight the important role that the youth play in addressing climate change impacts. Further, UNFCCC adopted the term Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) to set out goals to empower society including the youth to engage in climate action through education, training, public participation, public awareness, public access to information, and international cooperation. 

The six elements of ACE include climate change education, training, public awareness, public access to information, public participation, and international cooperation. Inclusion of these aspects at national, regional and international climate action provides opportunities for more inclusive and participatory climate change interventions, as well as paves the way for scaling up climate action. 

The Global Youth Forum on Climate Change

However, there remains a lot of scope for enhancing the role of youth in the climate change sphere. Despite the inclusion of aspects such as ACE into the climate processes, youth are faced with challenges. The Global Youth Forum on Climate Change (GYFCC) looks at providing a platform for youth across the world, including youth leaders, youth organisations and stakeholders to share experiences, network, and engage with like-minded actors in developing climate-related action and their implementation.

The Global Youth Forum on Climate Change (GYFCC) was first organised in 2016 by SLYCAN Trust with the Climate Change Secretariat of Sri Lanka and aims to increase youth participation in climate action and provide a platform to learn, share knowledge, and empower youth to enhance the contribution of youth to the processes, and become pioneers in addressing climate impacts at local, national, regional and international level. The GYFCC also aims to support youth in developing and implementing climate action project proposals through mentoring, capacity building, and networking.

This year, GYFCC will be held from 16 to 18 December preceded by the Youth Forum on Climate Change organised at national level on 14 and 15 December. The Forum will include partners and collaborators from national governmental institutions, youth organisations and networks, research entities and think tanks, international and multilateral organisations, civil society organisations, the private sector, research institutions, non-governmental organisations, and United Nations entities. 

Key thematic areas in the Global Youth Forum on Climate Change 2020

The Global Youth Forum will focus on four main thematic areas of climate change and disaster risk, biodiversity, oceans and coastal ecosystems, and sustainable food systems. The Forum also has five cross-cutting issues that will be relevant and included across all four main thematic areas, including just transition, participation and inclusion, education and capacity-building, means of implementation, and just recovery.

The Forum called for proposals by youth across the world focusing on the thematic areas of focus, whereby 14 projects have been shortlisted for voting on 14 and 15 December. The short-listed project proposals will be presented during the sessions of the Forum, and the highest voted, and the most implementable projects will be introduced to a project development process with other participants of the Forum. It is aimed that at the close of the Forum, the participants will contribute to developing a minimum of globally implementable project proposals related to addressing climate change impacts. 

The pre-event for the Global Youth Forum held from 14 to 15 of December, was open to all participants upon registration. The sessions held from 16 to 18 will be based on prior registration, selection where relevant, and session-based registration. 

Both the events are being held virtually for all participants via Zoom portal. More information on the events could be obtained by writing to [email protected] or visiting our dedicated webpage https://www.slycantrust.org/the-global-youth-forum-on-climate-change.