Tag Archives: Conference of Youth

COP17 SustainUs Guest Blog: Katherine and Louise

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Here is the first guest blog by Katherine Rainone and Louise Yeung of the SustainUS youth delegation to COP17 taking place now in Durban, South Africa!  They also provided this wonderful song put together by a group of African youth!

Katherine and Louise here reporting on our first two days in Durban. We have definitely been keeping busy! This evening, as we sat down to write an article on the 7th Conference of Youth at the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Negotiations in Durban, South Africa, we SustainUS delegates had a climate crisis of our own. While we sat around the table uploading photos and editing videos from earlier in the day, it began to rain. Then, it poured. Ellie, SustainUS Chair, pointed to the floor and exclaimed, “Guys…our house is flooding.” After the laughs wore off, the water was up to our ankles and if we didn’t do something quick we were going to have a serious problem. Itis a good thing we were still awake and able to come together to figure out a shared solution – just like the UN needs to come together to figure one out – by pushing water out of the door with baking sheets.

SustainUS COP17 youth delegates experience flooding! (Photo courtesy of SustainUS)

SustainUS COP17 youth delegates experience flooding! (Photo courtesy of SustainUS)

SustainUS is a youth-led non-profit run entirely by volunteers, and has been sending US youth to UN conferences for over 10 years. As one of the first two groups to send an organized youth delegation to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2005, SustainUS is a leader of the international youth climate movement.

Over the past two days, we participated in the Conference of Youth, a 3-day event for building youth capacity before the negotiations. We attended workshops ranging from public speaking to effective facilitation to understanding climate finance, mitigation, and other policy issues. Louise and I actually hosted a workshop ourselves on running a successful and integrated media campaign, where we discussed how to pitch stories to reporters, run social media campaigns, and track and analyze media success. We also broke out into working groups on topics such as finance, communications, and forest policy to develop our plans of action during the negotiations.

In addition to the hard work, all us youth had a bit of activist fun as well. We listened to inspiring stories from delegates across the globe: a representative from 350.org in the United States, the Putting a Price on Carbon campaign in Australia, rare shark protection from a delegate in the Philippines, and the African Youth Caravan.

Young People Taking Action

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Kids participate in a demonstration on Earth Day 2011 in the city of Raipur, India. (Courtesy Photo)

Kids participate in a demonstration on Earth Day 2011 in the city of Raipur, India. (Courtesy Photo)

Have you heard of the Conference of Youth (COY)? COY is going to celebrate its 7th year in action at the 17th UN Conference of the Parties (COP17) this November and December in Durban, South Africa.

Why is a group of young people from all over the world getting together in South Africa this winter? According to the International Youth Climate Movement, COY is “about bringing together youth from all over the world who are passionate about sustainability and climate change. It’s a place to connect, share skills and build a movement…All young people are welcome – experienced youth climate activists, newcomers, local South African students – anyone who wants to build a safe climate future!”

Interested in going to South Africa to participate, or already in South Africa and think your friends or schoolmates might also be interested in attending? Then check out the registration form here.  For more information on some of the young people taking action around the world to combat climate change, check out this photo gallery.

One issue that the youth delegation focuses heavily on is survival, or rather the idea that “
survival is not negotiable.” This idea began at COP 14 in Poznan, Poland, where over 90 countries signed onto the Survival Principle, which entails that a committed nation must do more, faster, to mitigate and adapt to dangerous climate change.” The Survival Principle is for all people in all countries, but is especially important to those countries most vulnerable to climate change, like those in the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries.

Are you considering going to COP 17 in South Africa? If you are unable to go, what are you interested in knowing about the event? What do you hope will come out of it?