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For years, no one would think that environmental problems do not concern children.
With banners in front of the Swedish Parliament, filling the streets in massive marches, sitting down with governments to expose how their communities suffer from climate change first hand or leading social movements across the globe, young people have been protagonists in the discourse against climate change in the last five years.
The next Climate Change Conference (COP27), to be held between November 6 and 18 in Egypt, will be no different.
CAF-Development Bank of Latin America and Future America opened a virtual space this Thursday for five young people from four countries in the region to ask authorities from Colombia and Panama and experts their doubts and emphasize what they, from their communities, they looked more pressing.
"If anyone is more aware of the problems in this place we call home, it is, perhaps, the young people," said Lorena Arroyo, director of América Futura and moderator of the event.
"The one who asks the most questions makes the least mistakes," summarized Ligia Castro, advisor on Climate Change of the Ministry of the Environment of Panama.
For the youngest participants, the focus has been clear: they ask for sustainable projects over time, negotiations from the territory and empowerment of indigenous and Afro-descendant communities.
“Our territories are living libraries;
they have to listen to their ancestry,” said Colombian Gunna Chaparro, a member of the Arhuaca community of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Colombia).
“The wisdom of the original peoples has been made invisible.
How is the territory going to be consolidated like this?”
Ancestrality and innovation were two of the key points of the conversation.
For Alicia Montalvo, Manager of Climate Action and Positive Biodiversity at CAF-Development Bank of Latin America, this is often a "misunderstanding": "When you talk about innovation, it seems that you are referring to
little machines
or sophisticated technology.
But we want to discover the ancient innovations that are already coping with climate change.
Innovation is, sometimes, recovering that wisdom of the original peoples”.
Guillermo Prieto, director of Climate Change and Risk Management at the Colombian Ministry of the Environment added: “We have to coordinate knowledge.
Many of the answers to what is happening to us today are in the localities themselves.
We have been the western societies who have modified the climate and the ecosystems”.
Another of the ideas that resonated the strongest in the virtual forum was the sustainability of the projects.
Robert Watson, a graduate of the Academy of Young Leaders for Climate Change in Panama, was blunt: “Once the projects that reach the territory are finished, how do we make it sustainable and that the installed capacity remains in such a way that the community benefit but, above all, be empowered?
What is the use of putting in an aqueduct if they are going to have to depend on state institutions or an external donor?”
Faced with this question, Marcela Ángel, director of the Research Program of the Environmental Solutions Initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, commented that it is something that “must be demanded more and more”: “Sustainability in time and local empowerment is fundamental and is something that should not be thought of when the project is finished, but from the structure and design of the project.
It is something that must be demanded more and more, so that there is a transfer of knowledge, technologies and capacities”.
Although Latin America and the Caribbean is responsible for only 8.1% of global polluting emissions, it is one of the countries that suffers the most from the effects of global warming.
This was an idea that was delved into on the spot.
“The young people of Latin America and the Caribbean have a very important role.
Your voice has to be heard at COP27″, said Montalvo.
“It is true that our region represents a much lower percentage in terms of emissions.
But, it is also true that, if we do not want to increase it, we have to change our way of growing, of producing energy, of consuming”.
The five boys and girls who participated in the conversation nodded and frowned after each appearance.
They know the climatic realities of their territories and they know that their future will depend on these great negotiations that will begin in two weeks in Egypt.
And that of the following generations.