Global Youth Summit on Climate Change

Global Youth Summit on Climate Change (GYSCC)
A project of Vision21, the Youth Cabinet and Global Voices
 
Citizens and experts around the world now view global climate change as one of the most urgent and profound issues facing humanity. Yet international negotiations have failed to produce and enact global solutions to the climate change crisis. Negotiators will try again in December 2007 at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
 
To help spur action, Vision21, the Youth Cabinet and Global Voices propose to ensure that youth – who will begin to experience the most drastic effects of climate change in their own lifetimes – have a strong voice at the convention. The proposed initiative will bring more than 1,000 pro-active youth together in The Netherlands this fall, representing 200 nations, to learn from each other’s domestic efforts on climate change, formulate collective recommendations and forcefully communicate them to the diplomats negotiating on behalf of their countries. This will help launch a coordinated global youth climate change campaign.
 
Nearly half of the world’s 6 billion people are 24 years old or younger, and they are more educated and globally connected than ever before. Nonetheless, their voice is rarely heard in climate negotiations. Global youth action would highlight the moral issue of intergenerational equity that is so often missing from climate debates and help influence negotiators.

The Global Youth Summit on Climate Change (GYSCC) seeks to:

• Educate 1000 participants on the structure and process of global climate change negotiations and how to influence them;
• Enable the participating youth to develop and recommend climate policy solutions to global and national decision makers;
• Build relationships among concerned and active youth from all nations;
• Launch a global youth-led initiative on climate change including a world wide viral marketing campaign and a global web presence that will impact millions of youth around the world;
• Generate global media attention on the intergenerational moral issue behind climate change.
  

The GYSCC includes these core elements:  

1. An extensive global youth recruitment effort to mobilise youth all over the world in order for them to come to the GYSCC (August - September 2007);
2. A dynamic Global Youth Summit on Climate Change in The Netherlands (October / November 2007);      
3. A world wide viral marketing campaign and global web presence about climate change during and after the GYSCC (Fall and Winter 2007);     
4. A final report and delegation will be sent to the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties 13 negotiations (Indonesia, December 2007);

Extensive media coverage of the initiative (Fall and Winter 2007). 

Global Voices, the Youth Cabinet and Vision21 have formed a partnership to organize this youth summit. Global Voices is the international branch of AmericaSpeaks, a leading American non-profit organization that engages citizens in important policy decisions that impact their everyday lives (www.globalvoices.org). Vision21 is a Dutch citizens’ initiative that strives to create breakthroughs that improve Dutch society by inspiring and connecting Dutch citizens (www.visie21.nl). The Youth Cabinet is a Youth initiative that voices the opinions of Dutch youth about the society they live in.
 
Download project proposal here (pdf-file).