Just over a week ago, world leaders met in Abu Dhabi to prepare for the upcoming UNSG Climate Action Summit in New York this September.
While Youth4Nature was not able to attend the meetings, our Regional Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean wrote an intervention that was read to the coalition members of the Nature-Based Solutions track. Her words are below:
Hello! My name is Vania and I am the Regional Coordinator for Latinamerica and the Caribbean of the Youth4Nature initiative.
I am 27 years old. At present, people my age are the biggest generation in the world. We will be rounding up to 60 by 2050, and we wonder what the world is going to look like for us then.
I can’t express to you how grateful I am to be addressing a room full of people who understand that nature is our best ally against climate change. You understand that we can’t do 1.5 without nature.
Now it is time for you to be bold about it.
Vania, Youth4Nature’s Latin America and Caribbean Regional Coordinator
To have my generation be heard in those rooms where we don’t have a say. Those rooms you will go into today to discuss and negotiate. I ask you that when you go out there, you don’t forget us. We don’t want to be the last generation to know what a coral reef looks like.
This is not just another meeting. We are at a point were this movement, this awareness of how climate change is shaping our lives, is at the verge of make it or break it. What you do in the next 12 hours will affect what happens in the next 12 months and the result of this will shape the next 12 years. It will shape how we see the next 12 years, whether we see hope or we see doom.
Vania is a biologist, working on ecosystem-based adaptation strategies with communities in the Valley of Mexico basin through Pronatura Mexico, an NGO based in Mexico City.
We are counting on you, and you can count on us too. Because we are ready.
Youth4Nature is an initiative gathering the stories of youth all over the world who are working on nature based solutions. We know what we need to do and we are ready but we need your help. We are a movement of young people who understand how important nature is for the challenges that lie ahead and we demand political leaders to step up. We need you to ambitiously bring nature based solutions into policy and climate action, we need you to facilitate the scene so that we can continue to grow our action.
And I promise you that we will.
Don’t be afraid to be bold, we will be there to back you up.
We are not in those rooms right now to say how much we need this and how ready we are, but you are there to say that for us. To say that for nature and for all those livings beings who didn’t ask to be in the middle of our mess.
Don’t be afraid.
Be bold.
Think of you, think of us.
Thank you.