The consequences of tomorrow, today

Today’s youth will live with the decisions that are made at Copenhagen. They will live with the current and future effects of climate change. Their interest is personal and contribution to the debate essential.


Young people are already represented across diverse stakeholder groups such as faith, sport, culture, communities and NGOs. As individuals, they can extend the ambition of these groups through their families and friends, schools, clubs, societies, consumer and behavioural choices. Collectively, groups such as UK Youth Climate Coalition, UK Youth Parliament, Plan UK and UNICEF are mobilising around action on climate change.

Supporting a platform for youth voice in the lead up to Copenhagen, the Government is:
 

• Collaborating with stakeholders to hold series of local & regional MP hearings in schools with young people on climate change
• Collaborating with stakeholders to support online debate
• Collaborating to ensure Government policy expertise is fed into youth events
  
  

Success so far

Young people’s groups are already successfully making powerful contributions to the climate change agenda. For example,

• J8 to G8. UNICEF Junior 8  sends a delegation of young people to the G8 summit, enabling young people to feed their views on climate change to the world’s most powerful leaders
• Plan UK’s ‘Children in a Changing Climate Coalition’ has run side events at previous COPs, most recently in Poznan, where delegates commented that young people’s arguments in favour of action on climate change were “powerful” and “influential”
• The UKYCC run a 'How old will you be in 2050' campaign
  

A critical mass of young people’s voices will add significant pressure to governments the world over to implement effective policies for action on climate change. Young people have a powerful voice and can help catalyse governments and societies to take action on climate change for the good of future generations: their own.