Introducing the #Youth4ClimateLive Educational Toolkit

This article provides an overview of the #Youth4ClimateLive Educational Toolkit. Scroll to the bottom for links to the specific constituent parts you're interested in, or download the kit in full here.

Young people all over the world see climate change as the defining crisis of our time and want to take action. This is about their future—both short-term and long-term—and youth voices, ideas, and stories need to be included at the highest levels of decision-making. Many young people are experiencing climate impacts first-hand and others are learning about climate change in schools and universities, but what can they do about it? That’s where the #Youth4ClimateLive Series and complementary Educational Toolkit come in!

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What is #Youth4ClimateLive?

The #Youth4ClimateLive Series, which concluded in February 2021, brought together a diverse group of unstoppable youth at the forefront of creative climate action for virtual intergenerational and interactive conversations with policymakers and experts on a variety of climate topics. The goal of #Youth4ClimateLive was to engage, educate, and excite a worldwide cohort of young people, empowering them to collaborate with their peers, lead their communities, and influence policymakers to enact meaningful climate action at the local and global levels. The Series offered your people a unique chance to:

• Find an accessible and exciting entry-point to exploring the world of climate impacts, solutions and policies through inspirational youth-led conversations. 

• Learn from the leaders of their generation who are implementing climate solutions within their own communities and be introduced to movers and shakers from the global climate policy landscape.

• Connect with other young climate advocates from around the world

• Increase their climate literacy on key topics such as: Sustainable Recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, Nature-Based Solutions, and Adaptation & Resilience. 

Students that tuned in to the Series also had the opportunity to enter the #SumItUp Competition for a chance to win a spot at the September 2021 Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition event just before Pre-COP26 in Milan. Submissions to the contest closed at the end of March; the winner will be chosen from a pool of finalists by popular vote in the months ahead.

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What is Pre-COP26? 

To explain what a Pre-COP is, we should first introduce what a COP is!  Every year, the United Nations hosts a high-level climate summit called the Conference of the Parties (COP), where representatives from 197 countries (aka “parties”) convene to take decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  The main aim of the Convention is to prevent “dangerous” human interference with the climate system.  Each COP is hosted by a different country, with the first summit being held in Berlin in 1995.  You may have heard of the landmark Paris Agreement, which was adopted in 2015 under the French COP21 Presidency.  The most recent COP was the 25th, held in Madrid at the end of 2019, where a partnership between the UK and Italy for the presidency of COP26 was decided in response to the UN's call for even more ambitious targets in efforts to implement the Paris Agreement.

The UK will host COP26 in Glasgow from 1 to 12 November 2021, with Italy hosting a number of key preparatory events in Milan such as the youth event "Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition", from 28 to 30 September 2021, and the Pre-COP Summit, from 30 September to 2 October 2021. Pre-COP26 will be attended by around 40 countries, representatives of the UNFCCC Secretariat, the chairs of the Subsidiary Bodies of the Convention and a number of stakeholders who play a key role in the fight against climate change.

The Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition event plans to bring together almost 400 young people aged between 18 and 29 from all over the world for a landmark youth conference in Milan. The first two days will be dedicated to working groups, where the young delegates will have the chance to develop concrete proposals on topics relevant to the COP negotiations, while the final day will host intergenerational discussions between Youth4Climate participants and the Ministers attending Pre-COP26.

If you’re a young person reading this wondering how you can participate, consider getting involved with YOUNGO, the official Youth Constituency of the UNFCCC, and its upcoming Conference of Youth, COY16. You can use the resources in the #Youth4ClimateLive Educational Toolkit to make a difference too. By learning the basics of climate policy and engaging with the #Youth4ClimateLive community, you can share your knowledge and passion with your friends, teachers and community! We all have a role to play, and yours is unique to who you are and the skills, talents, and passions you possess.

What is the #Youth4ClimateLive Educational Toolkit?

The #Youth4ClimateLive Educational Toolkit is an interactive document that links to learning resources and activities to complement the virtual series. This toolkit is constructed in a flexible way so that anyone—educators, students, and/or parents—can use its resources in conjunction with the archived #Youth4ClimateLive episodes to plan exciting lessons & creative activities, dig deeper into important climate topics and engage directly with the global climate community.

The Toolkit is divided into three sections: LEARN, ACT, and GET INSPIRED. Click on the topic in each section to find a web-based interactive collection of resources. In LEARN, resources are labeled to indicate an intermediary or advanced level. “Get Your Feet Wet” resources are accessible to most learning levels while “Dive Deeper” resources are more technical and scholarly, linking to detailed studies and papers. To go beyond learning about the topics, ACT offers an array of activities that can be completed alone or in collaboration with others as classroom exercises - in both virtual and in-person settings. Finally, GET INSPIRED recommends creative ways to engage with climate action through poetry, music, films, games, puzzles, and apps. Everyone has a part to play in creating a resilient and sustainable future and we hope that this toolkit will provide students and youth with new ways of harnessing their creativity, interests, and skills to engage more meaningfully with climate action.

You can also navigate directly to our web-based Toolkit resources using the links below:

Adaptation & Resilience: Collective Efforts for a Sustainable Future

Sustainable Recovery: Building a Better Future Together

Nature-Based Solutions: Working in Harmony With Our Planet

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Harnessing Creative Climate Solutions

Youth-Led Climate Action: The Rise of a Global Movement

Inclusive Engagement: Amplifying Marginalized Voices

Thumbnail image courtesy of Sasin Tipchai, Pixabay.