This grant application is for participating with 3-6 delegates at the UN climate conference COP20 in Lima, in cooperation with the Resource Group on the Environment of the World Alliance of YMCAs (RGE). The RGE is an international working group, dedicated to increasing the interest for climate and environment related issues, nationally and internationally, within the global YMCA movement. The work is to a large extent based on the international efforts to solve the problems with climate change. Therefore the work peaks every year at the UN climate conferences, even though the most imoportant work is done before and after the conferences.
Y Climate Action has worked with environment- and climate related issues since 2009, both on a local, national and global level. Through yearly participation at the UN climate conferences since 2009, the group has a unique knowledge about the international climate negotiations from the perspective of a global youth movement. The group therefore has taken a leading role when it comes to youth influence at the conference, both from a Swedish and a YMCA perspective. At the COP19 conference in Warsaw, Poland, more than half of the Swedish youth present where YMCA members. We do, however, believe that the interest and participation among Swedish youth is far too small, and therefore we actively try to increase the interest and awareness in this very important issue.
Youth paritcipation at the climate conferences ha sturned out to be an efficient means to getting media attention for climate issues. During the Warsaw conference Norway had a very large youth participation with more than 25 delegates, which resulted in a very thorough reporting from the norwegian national broadcasting company, NRK.
Y Climate Action has also started a far reaching cooperation with the global YMCA environment group RGE. Through this cooperation we hope to spread information, raise awareness and create interest for environment issues at the global level. In order to achieve this at COP20, the RGE has started talks with the YMCA of Peru, hoping for large local interest in the conference. This contact is coordinated through the RGE, and is lead by one member of Y Climate Action and one member of YMCA Brazil.
Largely thanks to the work of members of Y Climate Action, the RGE has just launched three separate working groups for 2014. At the same time, Y Climate Action has continued its work with an environment certification for local Swedish YMCA associations.
The three working groups are focused on creating a position paper for the YMCA regarding climate and environment issues, making a "green profile" for the 2014 YMCA World Challenge and participation at COP20 in Lima. All the work is related, with the final goal of an updated way of looking at climate and environment issues within the YMCA, and using the World Challenge and COP20 to spread the work, both inside and outside of the YMCA. Members of Y Climate Action are coordinators for all three working groups.
Through our participation at earlier UN climate conferences, we have established good contacts with several other Swedish organisations that are active in the climate field. During the Warsaw conference we cooperated with Push Sweden and Nature & Youth Sweden. Our contact with the Swedish political delegation and the Swedish Ministry of the Environment has been at least as important as the cooperation with other youth organisations, and we have participated actively in the meetings we've been invited to, both before, during and after the conference. During the Warsaw conference, one of our participants had a text published at Sweden's largetst environment blog, another participant did an impressive lobbying work for intergenerational equity, resulting in "future generations" being added in the preamble for the agreement to be signed in Paris 2015. Y Climate Action delegates also started a live blog during the last 20 hours of the conference, when the most important negotiations took part. The work was continued together with students from Yale and MIT, a party leader from the youth wing of the swedish green party and experts from the think tank Fores.
In order to spread the work and possibilities to more young people in more countries, we intend to arrange a youth- and climate leadership course during the pre-cop Conference of Youth. The goal of this course is to give tools for the participants to start their own climate groups at home and then participate in the global efforts.
The overarching goal for our participation in Lima and for all work of the RGE and Y Climate Action is to create larger knowledge, more participation and deeper cooperation nationally and internationally.