UK, Italy and Singapore engage with youth to tackle sustainability issues at the Singapore COP26 Youth Climate Dialogue

SINGAPORE, 18 MARCH 2021

Singaporean youth demonstrated their ardour and dedication in shaping the environmental and sustainability agenda on the COP26 Youth Local weather Dialogue.

Organised in partnership between the Nationwide Youth Council, British Excessive Fee in Singapore, the Italian Embassy Singapore, and the Nationwide College of Singapore’s Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Legislation (APCEL) and Vitality Research Institute (ESI), the dialogue was geared toward driving youth motion and understanding their issues on problems with sustainability and local weather change.

Forging partnerships to interact and join youth to worldwide platforms

Such strategic partnerships with native and worldwide organisations present expanded alternatives for youth engagement within the surroundings and sustainability house, enabling younger folks to share their views and concepts and join with the bigger international group.

Addressing the gathering through video, COP26 President-Designate Alok Sharma famous how, internationally together with in Singapore, younger folks had been addressing the local weather disaster with power and fervour. “I’m dedicated to younger folks’s voices shaping the UK’s COP26 Presidency. This is the reason we’ve established the COP26 Civil Society and Youth Advisory Council and we’re co-hosting the Youth for Local weather 2021 occasion in Milan with our COP26 co-hosts Italy.”

Mr Sharma invited members to share their ideas on the 4 priorities for COP26: (i) Decreasing carbon emissions, (ii) Strengthening adaption and reliance to local weather change, (iii) Opening up larger non-public and public local weather finance flows, and (iv) Enhancing collaboration between authorities, enterprise and civil society to sort out our shared local weather challenges.

Ms Grace Fu, Minister for Sustainability and the Atmosphere, in her opening remarks reaffirmed the Ministry’s dedication to interact companions, together with the youth, on sustainability: “A sustainable future for Singapore is contingent upon the collective efforts of all stakeholders. Our youths have an necessary function to play on this journey of co-creation, with their larger stake sooner or later. The Authorities will co-create our nation’s sustainability journey with youths to understand the Singapore Inexperienced Plan 2030.”

Harnessing the power of youth to drive sustainability efforts

In her opening remarks, Her Excellency Kara Owen, British Excessive Commissioner to Singapore highlighted the significance of worldwide and all-of-society collaboration to fight the impacts of local weather change. “COP26 is an opportunity to realize one thing transformational. Inexperienced and development go collectively. They don’t seem to be, don’t have to be, and shouldn’t be a selection of both/or. Securing our collective local weather future is a precedence for the UK – not simply throughout multilateral platforms just like the UN, the Commonwealth and in our G7 Presidency, however it’s also central to the SG-UK Partnership for the Future. We’ve an actual likelihood to harness younger folks’s ingenuity, creativity and fervour to win this battle.”

Raffaele Langella, Ambassador of Italy to Singapore, additionally pressured the significance of the youth contribution to boost the attention of individuals about environmental issues and to outline a method to deal with local weather change. For this function, Italy will host the occasion “Youth4Climate: driving ambition” from 28 to 30 September the place younger delegates and the ministries, will take part to the preparatory convention Pre-COP26, and can talk about collectively.

Offering a platform for youth have a say on sustainability points necessary to them

The dialogue noticed representatives from partnering organisations have interaction in vigorous conversations with 20 youth members comprising people in tertiary training, younger professionals and youth advocates via panel discussions on the priorities and targets of COP26 and sharing periods by organisations resembling Singapore Youth for Local weather Motion (SYCA), which provided alternatives for youth to interact in proactive discussions with business consultants on the environmental plans for Singapore and the area. The occasion additionally noticed Nigel Topping, the UK’s Excessive Degree Local weather Motion Champion, have interaction with the youth members through a digital set-up.

Discussions centred round key worldwide and native priorities on sustainability and the surroundings and the significance of youth engagement in addressing these challenges. Points introduced up included:

• Position of Singapore youth in driving environmental change within the run-up to COP26 and the way consciousness may
  be translated into motion
• Significance of multilateralism throughout local weather negotiations
• Assist for loss and damages particularly in direction of susceptible nations
• Significance of company governance to fight local weather change
• Decoupling financial development and carbon emissions

Supporting youth via offering alternatives for them to take motion and create change

Chief Government on the Nationwide Youth Council, Mr David Chua inspired youth to grab alternatives to take motion in his opening remarks, “There are a lot of alternatives for us to take part, to form, and to coach. And establishments and governments can not create all the alternatives. Plenty of it falls additionally on younger folks. And as leaders, we’d like you to create a set of alternatives on the market in several dimensions and totally different aspects of what we need to obtain, and on the similar time, be acutely aware about bringing the group alongside.”

Deputy Director of APCEL, Assistant Professor Tara Maria Davenport concurred with the sentiment, stating that the youth current on the occasion signify “the primary technology to know, no doubt, that we’re destroying our Earth and doubtless the final that may do something about it” and urged decision-makers on the worldwide and native ranges to “carry youth onboard on the earliest attainable phases of the policy-making and planning processes.” Asst. Prof Davenport affirmed APCEL’s dedication to furthering the targets of the Paris Settlement by partnering with different like-minded thought leaders in furthering the environmental rule of legislation, together with via the Local weather Change Litigation Initiative (CCLI), which is able to contribute to the discourse on local weather change litigation and supply related instruments to policymakers and wider stakeholders.

Deputy Government Director of the Vitality Research Institute, Affiliate Professor Lee Poh Seng, additionally mentioned that to additional capability constructing efforts amongst youth and educators in Singapore, the ESI hopes to launch a Sustainability Seminar Sequence that can undertake a coordinated and balanced strategy to local weather change and power training and enculturation. He mentioned the ESI appears ahead to working with related ministries and businesses, business, institutes of upper studying, and analysis institutes to mount this effort collectively.

Notes to editors:

About COP 26

COP refers back to the decision-making physique of the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change (UNFCCC). In November 2021, the UK can be internet hosting the twenty sixth annual session of the Convention of the Events to the Conference, or ‘COP26’, in Glasgow. On the summit, delegates, together with heads of state, local weather consultants, and negotiators, will come collectively to agree on coordinated motion to sort out local weather change. In addition to the negotiations, there may also be house for nations, worldwide organisations and different delegates to showcase local weather motion, spotlight numerous local weather change points and share information. See https://ukcop26.org/

About COP 26 Youth Local weather Dialogue

The COP26 Youth Local weather Dialogue is a youth engagement session forward of COP26. Organised in partnership between the British Excessive Fee in Singapore and the Embassy of Italy in Singapore, together with the Nationwide Youth Council and the Nationwide College of Singapore’s Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Legislation and Vitality Research Institute, the dialogue gives a platform for youth in Singapore to interact in local weather optimistic transitions although the sharing of concepts, information and sources. The occasion targeted on understanding the important thing areas of local weather change which are most important to at present’s youth and inspired discussions to attract out the connection between native challenges and alternatives with the broader Commonwealth group.

-Finish-

For media enquiries, please contact: