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Following on from two weeks of COP27 and the Transform Our World Youth Summit, Andrew and Jodie talk about why it's so important to listen to young people on climate action, and what they bring to the global conversation.

To find out more about what young people have been saving, you can rewatch any sessions from the Transform Our World Youth Summit here.

 

"We Share Freely". The change we want to see in the world is bigger than we are. So, we're sharing our knowledge, resources and ideas to help more people and organisations take steps forward towards our vision of a green and thriving planet, where everyone can enjoy happy and healthy lives within the Earth's limits.

 

As part of this, we've launched our "5 Minute GAP" series, a collection of five minute conversations that will share how we work and what we're working on. We'll talk about what we're trying to achieve and why, how we function as an organisation, and the thinking behind our plans and strategy.

 

We'll be regularly sharing these conversations, which will feature different members of our team and trustee board, as well as external experts.

 

We hope you enjoy listening in to our chats, getting to know our team and finding out what makes us who we are. 

 

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If you prefer to read rather than watch, the transcription is here:

Andrew: If you have a take away from the last two weeks of conversations and perhaps one that's most relevant to, you know, what, still, you know, ongoing in Egypt, what would that be?

Jodie: I think that youth voice is the most important thing. And, you know, diversity of youth voice as well is incredibly important and I know sort of hearing from young people, not just in the UK but all over the world, really heard from young people as part of the Youth Summit from Pakistan, from Uganda, from various places across the world. And actually every, every single young person has lived a different life, has had different experiences, and therefore have different opinions and things that they want to share, and things that they're passionate about. And I think, you know, you can't really quantify the importance of hearing these voices and gaining those valuable insights. And I think, now more than ever, we need to be hearing and listening to those young voices. 

You know, I think it’s said a lot about the fact that obviously it would be them that’s inheriting the planet and it’s their futures. But actually, that's kind of looking in the future. And I think we need to focus on young people now and hear from young people now. I think we've got such a passionate, passionate generation of youth that really care not only about the environment, but also about kind of social topics as well and, you know, deeply care about inequalities in the world. So I think, yeah, it's really important to have those voices heard in a sort of intentional way, in a way that actually shows that they’re being listened to and things are being actioned as a result of that. So that's definitely what I've taken away, is just the absolute value of hearing from different, different types of young people with different, different backgrounds and different things to share. 

Andrew: It's really interesting, and I guess that maybe whereas, you know, the negotiators and the leaders from different countries take up their different positions in the negotiations, which can often you know, and often for very valid reasons. But that kind of slows the pace of the talks down, whereas young people across international borders actually have a lot more in common. And while, of course, those differences in power between different young people from different country exist just as the difference between, you know, the power that younger people have versus those who are older exists. Maybe there’s more common ground between young people from different parts of the world. 

Jodie: Yeah, I mean, I know that I’ve observed a lot of those kind of similarities and connection points and I think whether that's not exactly the same in terms of specific actions or specific pathways, it's been very similar in terms of values and kind of like the real motivations for these things. Yeah, yeah, I think I agree. And I think often there's a there's an element of fear that comes with hearing that authentic youth voice because I think young people aren't afraid to say what they feel. And, you know, it's not as filtered. And as much as it can be a bit of a gamble and, you know, you don't know what you're going to get. I think it's definitely a risk worth taking in terms of just hearing that authentic youth voice. 

Andrew: And it’s, I guess, also that young people have kind of led the way, really with the Fridays for Future movement, in particular at opening the political space up for more ambitious action, I guess, which is very relevant, I think, to what's going on in Egypt because, you know, one of the things that has been on the table all week and I've heard different heard and read different things, is that, you know, people are trying to kill off the 1.5 degree target, some for good reasons, and that they feel it's really hard to reach now and then I think, you know, some politicians, for more mendacious reasons because, you know, they don't want that level of ambition. And it feels to me like if there's ever a role for, well, younger people, but all of us really that are in favour of trying to keep ambition as high as possible, because we know the consequences of not doing that, that, you know, that's a really important thing, but something that can particularly come through that advocacy by young people. 

Jodie: Yeah, exactly. And I mean that the young people who've been involved in the summit that I've been kind of following on socials, they've been the ones you know, in Egypt with the banners saying, you know, we need to fight for this 1.5 degrees. And, you know, there's no there's no time, there’s no room, there’s no space for it to be pushed any further. And so, yeah, definitely have been seeing that passion come through. And I think there's times like COP, it's so important to kind of have these... keep the hope and have these ambitious targets. And I know that I am, kind of something that I took note of is a positive outcome I saw from COP was the that Sri Lanka released this climate prosperity plan. Where they had a target of increasing their renewable energy generation from 35% to 70% by 2030. And to me, I sort of that seemed like a really positive, ambitious target that was kind of quantifiable and you can be held to account. 

And I think we need to see more of that going forward. And I definitely think that that's what young people want to see as well is yeah, sort of holding power to account and kind of having some accountability with what we're doing and how we're going to do it. And, you know, just having an open openness, I think a lot of the time I think these conversations that go on in the background and that those high levels with the global leaders is often not kind of common knowledge. So I think that's why COP is so important, especially including young people in that.