Round Up from COP15 and what lies ahead

Personal testimonies given to our Young Reporters at COP 15:
“It’s great to see so many young people at the summit. They are right to say ‘this is our world too, you elders have made a mess of things and should get out of the way’.” Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu

"Young people are not just the audience - you are the activists. When millions of people come together, we can make a real difference. I get more letters and emails about climate change than any other issue. There is a real pressure from young people to do something about it,” Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister

“To bring about a change, children can make a tremendous change in the question of mitigating climate change,” Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

“Thousands of young people care about the outcome of this conference. They all want their future to be safer,” Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

“It is very important that children are involved at this conference because it encourages them to understand the full meaning of the convention on the rights of the child and secondly in my experience children are communicating in a skillful way with each other and together, “ Mary Robinson, former Irish President

“I think it is really important that children’s voices are heard because it is your future we are talking about and you need to solve it by yourself because we are not going to solve your problems miraculously,” John Holmes, UN ions Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

“I would hope they (children) would be there,” John Kerry, former US Presidential candidate.
“It is crucial that children and young people participate. And for us adults, it is of great importance that we think about that it is you who are young, and those who are actually not yet born, that we are now making decisions for,” Åsa-Britt Karlsson, Swedish Environment State Secretary

Kenyan Environment Minister John Michuki walked hand-in-hand with 12-year old Plan supported reporter Joseph & invited him to come to his office in Nairobi to discuss more.

“Let’s not wait while they talk … we have a generation that won’t wait,” Josette Sheeran, Executive Director World Food Programme:

“It’s a right to participate – but it’s also just smart to listen,” Ulla Tornaes, Minister for Development Cooperation, Denmark: on children’s participation

Moving forward – what Plan is now calling for:
Plan calls on UNFCCC decision makers to take the following measures to promote intergenerational justice:
• Acknowledge children as official stakeholders, providing formal mechanisms for children to
join the dialogue and contribute to decision making on climate change.
• Guide national delegations on how to facilitate consultations with children on climate
change decision-making.
• Ensure full accountability for commitments made on mitigation and adaptation, by
developing monitoring and evaluation mechanisms which provide for the contribution of
children’s views.
• Encourage civil society organisations engaged in climate change to establish formal
mechanisms for children’s participation.
• Emphasise the significance of children – in terms of differentiated impacts and children’s
‘agency’ – within the 5th IPCC Assessment Report.
• Insist that governments must invest more in education so future generations have the
knowledge and skills to better manage our environment and adapt to climate change.

Children report on the disappointing outcome of COP 15

‘Hope for a deal is up to the children’ Maldives president tells young reporters
The leader of one of the islands most threatened by climate change said children can play a key part in clinching a deal at Copenhagen.

Al Gore defends Obama's climate change work
International climate campaigner Al Gore has hit out at critics of the US government who say the superpower is still not doing enough to tackle climate change.

Island nations demand ocean protection
Protecting the oceans must not be overlooked in the fight against climate change, the Indonesian head of a new coalition of island nations told the Copenhagen talks.

'Get out the way elders,' Tutu tells conference
Archbishop Desmond Tutu today praised young people for fighting for climate justice in Copenhagen.

UK energy minister "frustrated" by talks
As the climate change talks in Copenhagen continue, young journalists Aakash and Annie tracked down and questioned the minister leading the negotiations for the UK.

for more information see: http://plan-international.org/what-we-do/child-participation/child-media/copenhagen-climate-talks-giving-children-a-voice

Children set homework for adults at COP15 climate conference

Side event puts children back on the map of UNFCCC negotiations
At the only event at COP15 to focus on the rights and capacities of children in responding to climate change, children from Indonesia, Kenya and the UK called upon governments to listen to communities, especially children in reducing risks to disasters.
‘Children around the world are unrepresented and we feel our voices are not heard or considered by the leaders or governments.' Said Beatrice, 13, from Kenya.
Reina, 13, from Indonesia said, ‘International conferences such as this are the place that governments and children can work in unity.'
The side event organised by the Children in a Changing Climate coalition, on Tuesday 15 December, made efforts to restore the voice and rights of children in the Conference of Parties. Chaired by Margareta Wahlström, UN Assistant Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, presenters highlighted how children around the world are actively engaging with adaptation to climate change and reducing the risk of disasters caused by a changing climate.
IDS Research Fellow Tom Tanner presented examples of how children are already playing active roles as agents of change in their communities to reduce risks and adapt to climate change.


Children have rights and responsibilities
A new report Children and Disaster Risk Reduction: Taking stock and moving forward (pdf) presents 16 case studies of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) involving children. These case studies sit along a continuum of child involvement from building children's knowledge to child-led action reflecting different scales of child leadership.
The report - by IDS and Agulhas: Applied Knowledge for UNICEF and the Children in a Changing Climate coalition - proposes that concerted effort is now required to enable child-led DRR to transform policies.
Leon, 17, from the UK stressed that the Convention on the Rights of the Child gives children rights, and it also gives them responsibilities. Beatrice said ‘given the opportunity, the education and the resources, we have the potential to make a difference and take control.'

Homework for Governments
Margareta Wahlstrom challenged the audience to identify concrete actions to strengthen children's voice and proposed that ten percent of participants in the UN Climate Change Negotiations should be children.
The three young participants set homework for the Governments to prioritise children's action to reduce risks and to include DRR in national curriculums. NGO's were called upon to help bring children and governments closer together to address the challenges of climate change. Download your homework!

see events presentations here

Young Leaders of tomorrow dialogue with Leaders of Today on Climate Change

Children from Kenya, Indonesia and the Netherlands dialogue with heads of Humanitarian agencies on the impact of climate change on disasters and child rights.

Leaders of today included Mary Robinson, John Holmes and Jet Li
together with the head of IFRC and WFP.

The Event was hosted by Danish Newspaper Politiken on Tuesday December 15, 2009 to mark the COP 15's Humanitarian Day
Opening Statement was delivered by Ulla Tornaes, Minister for Development Cooperation, Denmark

"Children are in the frontline and their rights should be to the fore" - So said the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, to Marius, 16 from Netherlands before a packed auditorium at the Politiken Haus, Copenhagen.
Both were participating in an intergenerational dialogue entitled Young Leaders of Today: Leaders of Tomorrow hosted by Politiken, a leading Danish newspaper. The event was part of the Humanitarian Day activities taking place in Copenhagen as part of the UNFCCC fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP15). Ms Robinson and Marius were just two on a panel of twelve made up of six young people together with six leaders of humanitarian agencies.
A wake up to reality
Joseph, 12, from Kenya and Ivalu, 15, from Greenland both shared their experiences of how climate change was already impacting their communities, family livelihoods and their futures. Joseph dreams of becoming an engineer but, as things are today, is unlikely to see his dream realised - his family need his help to try and produce food from drought ridden lands, keeping him from his studies. Ivalu sees her traditional culture melting away alongside the ice as traditional hunters and fishermen migrate to the cities for work. They challenged the panel to help their communities and to ensure that they can grow up in a world where they have a history to inherit and a future ahead of them.
"We are in a pickle" agreed Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme. The world, she said, has woken up too slowly and a generation of children could be lost as a result. John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief openly recognised this as a challenge, and said that whilst the root causes of climate change need to be tackled, in the short-term changes to the climate are not going to be stopped. He then emphasised that we do already have the knowledge to reduce disaster impact and build resilience to change - but it must be mobilised better at the community level.
Ulla Tørnæs, Denmark's Minister for Development Cooperation responded that the COP15 negotiations were aiming to do just that; both tackle the root causes of climate change and develop the means to support communities, including children, to adapt.
A question of governance
Further stories from young people raised the issue of government accountability in responding to climate change. Arame, 24, from Senegal shared her experience of a community made increasingly vulnerable to climate impacts as a result of ‘bad government decisions', whilst Dita, 16, from Indonesia shared her frustration following her attempts to ask the Government to act on climate change. Supported by Xiao, 23, from China they asked the panel how they could work together to make the voices of vulnerable people, including children, heard and how they, as children and young people, could support them in their struggle.
All the adult panel members stressed that more linkages should be made between sectors and with children and their communities so that by bringing different perspectives to the same problem, the call to act would be strengthened.
A smart way of working
The meeting's Chair, Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Secretary-General Save the Children, summed up some of the debate claiming that those who only think of children needing protection will ‘lose out'. She recognised that whilst children's participation is a right, they also have solutions to offer. So really, "it's just smart to listen to children and youth".
The overwhelming message to tomorrow's leaders from the leaders of today was that they should be proud of and continue to do what they are already doing - bringing the voice of children and vulnerable people into dialogue with others.
The young panellists were encouraged not to wait for political decisions but to use their energy and creativeness to begin solving the problems whilst the world's leaders talk.

Margareta Wahlström to chair Child-led Climate Change Adaptation Event

Monday Madness at COP 15

Taken by our young reporter Carl (16yrs), from Sweden

Research Findings on Plan's work with Children is shared at D&C Days

Today, at the COP's Development and Climate Days - Dr Thomas Tanner from the Institute of Development Studies shared findings from his research work with Plan in the event's session on "Children at the heart of community-based responses to climate change".

Click here for more information on the lessons learnt and recommendations of the research focused on Plan's child centred DRR work in El Salvador and Philippines



At the D&C Film Festival on Monday, December 14th - Plan also screened the Participatory Videos on Climate Change produced by Children in the Philippines
see:

Flood: Menace to EducationBarobo,
The sinking Barangay
The Pock-marked Face of Barangay Caga-ut