Back in December 2008, were bursting with pride to be a part of the first-ever, all-singing all-dancing UK Youth Delegation to the UN Climate Change Conference in Poland.
Okay, so maybe the delegation wasn’t all-singing, all-dancing, but they were pretty unbelievable. Together with Emma and Casper from the UK Youth Climate Coalition, we brought together 15 of the best and brightest climate obsessed minds in the British Isles. In December 2008, we hopped on the train and headed east to Poznan, Poland to meet the policy-making big wigs and encourage them to take climate change seriously.
What we did:
Here’s a slideshow of the UK Youth Delegation, and here are some photos of the international youth (there were 500 of us!). Here’s a video of an action we did called ‘Project Survival’ and here’s another one, with a speech that youth made to the UN on the last day of the negotiations.
Here’s the official bit:
The UK Youth Delegation (UKYD) participated in the Fourteenth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Fourth Conference of the Parties serving as Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP14 and COP/CMP4).
Yep – that’s a mouthful. Translated, it means that we built a delegation of 15 young people who know that the climate crisis is one of the defining issues of our generation and who want to take action to stop it. If we want to reduce the threat of dangerous climate change and adapt better to the changes that are already happening, we need to get involved in the international decision-making process.
We wanted to make sure that the first ever UK Youth Delegation had a strong voice in these negotiations. We called on our government to take strong action, shared important developments with people back home and connected with other 500 other youth delegates from around the world. And you should see what we did with a policy briefing document, a press release and a polar bear hat!