President Julia BLOCHER addressed a 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, UK. Photo Credit: Platform on Disaster Displacement
(IYF – London): Affirming the critical need for meaningful youth participation in climate change policies, the President of the International Youth Federation Julia BLOCHER addressed a 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) side event this week in Glasgow entitled ‘From Science to Policy to Action: Human Mobility in Times of Climate Change’.
The event was hosted by the European Union and co-organized by the IYF, the Platform on Disaster Displacement, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and Youth4Nature.
“My main message today is that climate change and migration are two development issues that cannot be addressed without including youth in all of three points: science, policy, and action”. Said Julia BLOCHER, IYF President.
She added, “Coming to the specific policy solutions that I would offer to the panel, I do think it's very important that we have genuine and meaningful participation of youth in the research that we're conducting as well as in the policy discussions, and frankly, they're already involved in the action and implementation parts. So even if we have achieved some progress on these points, youth are still edged out of the most important discussions on these topics.”
The event highlighted the latest research on human mobility and climate change, and how integrated policy frameworks are being developed - based on the best available science - to address the challenges and opportunities, especially for the most vulnerable and marginalized. During the event, an IYF-produced video of youth voices from around the world was played to spotlight youth experiences of climate change.
For nearly three decades the UN has been bringing together almost every country on earth for global climate summits – called COPs – which stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’ to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In that time, climate change has gone from being a fringe issue to a global priority.