Home Events 5th National Youth Conference on Climate Change concludes issuing 13-points Youth Declaration

5th National Youth Conference on Climate Change concludes issuing 13-points Youth Declaration

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Kathmandu, March 23, 2017: The fifth National Youth Conference on Climate Change, jointly organized by Nepalese Youth for Climate Action (NYCA) and Clean Energy Nepal (CEN) has come to an end with 13-points youth declaration. As many as 60 enthusiastic youth from diverse background attended the 3-days-long residential training held at Agricultural Development Bank Central Training Centre, Bode, Bhaktapur, beginning March 19.

Organized with an aim of ‘Empowering youth for resilient future,’ the conference was inaugurated by Mrs. Madhu Ghimire, Undersecretary at Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation. The session had a wide range of guest speakers including Sreeju Pradhan, Deputy Director of Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Bhushan Tuladhar, advisor at Clean Energy Nepal, Manjeet Dhakal, Climate Analyst, General Secretary of Clean Energy Nepal, and Rajan Thapa program Manager Clean Energy Nepal. On the occasion, Chief Guest Ghimire thanked NYCA for hosting such a conference and empowering youth for addressing climate change issues. “Youth are the agent of the change. So, you should bring some positive change in the society,” she advised the youth participating the conference.

The first day of the conference went through sensitizing youth on climate change and its policies with its impact on gender. Youth were engaged through story-telling, and sharing of their motivating climate-related stories among the participants.

Similarly, the second day was especially focused on roles and concerns of youths on environmental issues and ways to achieve sustainable development goals (SDG), the necessity of adequate research and policy implementation and career opportunities for youths. Similarly, the participants were engaged in participatory and interactive sessions with team building activities.

The third and the last day of the conference was focused on the campaign designing in which participants developed action plans to run campaigns to address climate change issues.

Through these various activities, the conference was successful to make the participants informative and interactive, and helped them to develop required skills to build a climate-resilient future.

The conference, supported by WWF Nepal, Southern Voices, and OXFAM formally concluded with a 13-points youth declaration. The declaration, to be submitted to the Government of Nepal, says:

  • Despite having a potential to contribute in climate action, the Nationally Netermined Contribution (NDC) of Nepal missed youth as actors/stakeholders. It’s a demand of youth to include us in decision making process and in the climate change workshops because it’s our right to get information and be part of such processes.
  • Proper investment along with engagement of youth for climate resilient future.
  • Youth should be taken as a Government delegate while participating in every Conference of Parties and other national and international conferences.
  • Formulate the Action plan to create Opportunities for Youth.
  • Effective action plan should be taken into account of the effective implementation of Paris agreement in tandem with goal no. 13 of SDGs.
  • Proper transparent disbursement of 80% Budget, allocated by government of Nepal guided by Climate Change Policy and National Adaptation program of Action.
  • Government should have proper climate disaster planning indicating effective enforcement of adaptation plan such as climate resilient building regulations.
  • Government should include Non-Motorized Transport (NMT) (walking, cycling and electric vehicles) in its plans and policies.
  • Adaptation related investment must include capacity building and technology transfer in climate smart agriculture.
  • Government should accept the required adaptation funds as Grant, but not Loan.
  • Government should come up with urgent actions to immediately address current air pollution.
  • Government should enforce the Article no. 35 of 2072 Constitution of Nepal i.e., “Every person shall have the rights to live in clean and healthy environment”.
  • Government should start research based works regarding loss, damage and potential impact of climate change in various sector. Hence, government should consider establishing research center with availability of resources under climate change policy 2011.