The Scientific community no longer has any doubts about climate change being a man-made threat for humanity.
In reality, the scientific consensus is currently at more than 97%, and degrees of certainties on specific topics have dramatically increased with the release of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report. However, climate change has become an intensely political debate, argued over by publics around the world with extremely different understandings on the science.
However, I don’t think anyone expected this. A recent study entitled Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change compared the perspectives of 3146 Earth scientists compared to a Gallup poll from 2008. In the study, the authors found that only 52% of Americans consider climate change to be real.
Even sadder, only 47% consider the scientific debate to be settled.
That means a majority of the people across the US still think we’re arguing about the science, and close to half of the country doesn’t even think it’s happening.
The reasons of this discrepancy are various, ranging from the lack of environmental education in schools, to the lobbying efforts of climate change denialists, to “mainstream media’s tendency to give contrarian voices equal weight with the climate science community”, as John Cook reported to the Guardian.
Increasing awareness on climate change is the pre-requirement for engaging the public in an effective decision-making process. If we want to reach a fair and ambitious agreement in Paris we need contributions from civil society and especially from young people, who are able to provide momentum for moving forward with new climate change action.
Within the UNFCCC, decisions ultimately depend on countries and therefore someone could argue that even if civil society was involved, its impact on the negotiations would be limited. However, if such engagement was implemented both at a national and international level, the issue would easily be overcome, as countries domestic positions would naturally reflect the general public’s interest. On the other hand, ensuring civil society’s participation in international gatherings could potentially provide direct and immediate inputs to policy-makers: that was the case with the Intergenerational Equity Working Group part of YOUNGO.
YOUNGO represents the Youth Constituency at the UNFCCC.
During Warsaw COP19, YOUNGO members worked effortlessly to force negotiators to mention the importance of “future generations” in the preamble of the ADP draft text. This is the key UN platform for creating a fair and equitable global agreement in the post-2015 era.
Whatsmore, YOUNGO members also managed to compile close to 70 declarations from parties that intend to include intergenerational equity as a core principle in the 2015 agreement.
Unfortunately, this achievement was a drop in the ocean.
In the majority of countries, youth participation to the decision making process is basically absent and public engagement is constantly hindered: youth organizations struggle to be acknowledged by institutions, and even when they do succeed, they are kept in marginal positions by those who fear to be scrapped. There are, however, two main initiatives that could be strengthened as means of implementation for Article 6 of the UNFCCC:
1) A worldwide, domestic review of school curricula to gradually include environmental education as a matter of study at all levels. There is an old saying that young people of today are the leaders of tomorrow; implementing awareness on climate change through students will ensure having wiser politicians in the future.
Interestingly enough, negotiators from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Poland and the EU feel the same way and made their voices heard only minutes ago in the negotiations here in Lima.
2) Encouraging countries to adopt official UN youth delegates: although some of YOUNGOs most relevant participants were from NGOs, youth climate movements or universities, the Intergenerational Equity WG’s success probably would not have happened without the active participation of a few official youth delegates. These official members had a much better chance to interact with respective countries negotiators because of their recognized role and opportunities. This is especially true when it comes to closed sessions.
Because of their age, young people are not only the ones who will be affected the most by climate change effects, but also the best natural representatives of future generations. As many negotiators see them as the negotiators of the future.
If civil society and young people will not be more consciously engaged through permanent and holistic educational programs on climate change, any agreement which may be reached will just be temporary, when we need a long term solution.