Last December, 195 countries reached an unprecedented agreement on climate change. Now that three months have passed since this victory, parties are faced with another, perhaps greater challenge: ensuring the implementation of the pledges made at the summit, now that the media spotlight and public attention has moved to other issues.
Bottom up initiatives will be crucial to achieving the goals set by each party, as climate change is a global challenge with local roots. Global youth have become a key actor at the local level, inspiring communities around the world to adopt environmentally friendly ways of living. All over the world, youth initiatives have grown, driven by determined young people eager to support climate action and have their say in COP negotiations.
This eagerness to impact change and be involved in deciding the future of our planet inspired Fannie Delavelle to set up an initiative aimed at bringing the voice of the global youth to the climate negotiations.
Young people from all around the world were invited to send her questions about climate change. She got lots of replies from every corner of the world: from Ethiopia to China, from Peru to Bulgaria, from the US to Australia, young professionals responded enthusiastically.
During the second week of COP21 in Paris, she asked high-level participants such as Rachel Kyte - CEO of Sustainable Energy for All and former Vice President of the World Bank- to answer their questions.
You can discover the answers in the “Youth voices to COP21” video series, composed of four segments:
Part 1 - The negotiations
Part 2 - Developing countries
Part 3 - Business
Part 4 - Career tips from COP21 participants
These videos highlight the importance of implementing the pledges made at COP21 even as the dust has now settled. The videos were directed, filmed and produced by Fannie Delavelle (LinkedIn and Twitter)
The high-level participants who contributed to the videos include:
- Alexis Gazzo, Partner at Ernst & Young, Cleantech & Sustainability services: “China has become a leader for renewable energy technology and products”, and is “standard setter in the electricity grid market”
- Jonathan Grant, Director at PwC, Sustainability & Climate Change: “You need to have a major revolution in all sectors in all countries every decade to 2050 and beyond”
- Rachel Kyte, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All (former Vice President of the World Bank Group and Special Envoy for Climate Change): “It costs more in relief than it does to invest in resilience”
- Balgis Osman-Elasha, Climate Change Expert at the Compliance and Safe Guards Division of the African Development Bank: “The experience of China: we need to learn from it” “We don’t want to follow the same trajectory”.
- Joël Pain, Executive Director at Ernst & Young - EMEIA Sustainable Finance Leader: “You can set up new businesses on these new bases”
- Fran Pavley, California Senator representing California's 27th State Senate district: “There are many parts in California where the city’s economy is based on oil: the taxes they get it from oil, the jobs are from oil”
- Clifford Rechtschaffen, Senior advisor for California Governor J. Brown, working on climate, energy, and environmental issues: “California can reach out with our counterparts even if national governments are not taking proactive action”.
- John Roome, Senior Director the World Bank Group's Climate Change Global Practice: “Using modern technology you can get a very good sense at very low cost as to what assets and communities are exposed to various risks”.
- Bambang Susantono, Vice-President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development at the Asian Development Bank: “We need local champions that on the ground make things happen”
