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The African Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC) at the Bonn climate talks

COP23: African youth fighting for climate action, DW, 12 Nov 17   Africa is harnessing the power of its emerging youth demographic to spearhead efforts to tackle climate change. By 2050, UNICEF estimates that approximately two out of every five children on our planet will be African. Africa’s rapidly burgeoning young generation is viewed by some as a precursor to a range of serious problems across the continent, ranging from unemployment to further migration crises. But they could very well be the key to confronting one of the biggest challenges of our time: climate change.

As delegates from across Africa gather for the latest round of international climate talks in Bonn this week, young African leaders and experts are hosting their own side-events to draw attention to their own fight against climate change, while highlighting the importance of African youth getting involved in the process.

The African Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC) was established back in 2006 shortly before COP12 talks kicked off in Nairobi, Kenya. Since then, support for climate change action among the African youth has grown considerably, as they actively work to raise awareness in their communities and hold their governments to account for inaction.

Young generation best equipped to tackle climate change

Maureen Sigauke is the co-founder of the community-based organization, Green Active Citizens Trust in Zimbabwe and was a speaker at WWF’s COP23 Africa Day panel, Youth and Climate Change in Africa. She explained to DW why young Africans should act now to secure their futures, when the effects of climate change will be more clearly felt across the continent.

“I think that it is important to know that climate change is a threat to development; it is a threat to job security – if floods happen it can threaten your job – it’s a threat to human rights, it’s a threat to economic development, it’s a threat to sustainable access to basic human rights such as food, shelter and poverty alleviation, particularly in the African case. So that’s why people should care, because everything that we know could change if climate change continues unabated.”…….http://www.dw.com/en/cop23-african-youth-fighting-for-climate-action/a-41333083

November 13, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AFRICA, climate change