A Youth Declaration on Climate Change

For the past two days, youths have been engaged in a mock Conference of Parties. The young leaders assumed roles as party delegates attached to negotiating blocks; each of them representing different countries.  They carried out climate change negotiations and were able to experience the scale and intensity of the COP.  While the goal was to have the youths engaged in the climate change discourse on the national and international stage, the mock session culminated with the drafting of a formal youth declaration which was presented to and signed by C.E.O. Doctor Kenrick Williams at today’s session for senior officials. Ryan Uh of the Northern Maya Association of Belize acted as president of the mock COP50.

Ryan Uh

Ryan Uh, Northern Maya Association of Belize

“The process of drafting the declaration has been based on the knowledge that we gained from the day and a half from the mock COP. So it’s basically us doing the crash course and then doing the follow up. So we were willing to ask for more time for us to modify and then perfect the language of the declaration.”

Duane Moody

“What are some of the issues that you guys have included in the declaration?”

Ryan Uh

“For the youths, we are basically asking for more inclusion – not only for the youths, but also for different other perspectives, indigenous persons – they also classify as inclusion. Different persons that have an effect or contribute to climate change. It’s a lot of pressure to handle because I do not face only for the youths, but also for the specific needs of the indigenous persons, so you have to bear in mind the youths and then the indigenous youths which can also be a different category with a lot of needs.”

Kenrick Williams

Dr. Kenrick Williams, C.E.O., Ministry of Sustainable Development, Climate Change & Disaster Risk Management

“Our biggest feathers in our cap is that we have a lot of young people as part of our negotiation team. So we have people like Ms. Edalmi Grijalva from the Forest Department, Mister Sumeet Betancourt, members from the National Climate Change Office who form part of our negotiating teams who are young people, and so we also wanted to build their capacity in the art and process of negotiation. You know that one of the things is that a single word and a single number can really affect the position and the debating skills and negotiation skills is critical.”