Youth Alliance-Building & Cross-Border Solidarity

supports global collective action for climate justice and ensures that perspectives of the more affected people and areas are reflected.

There is a need to acknowledge a more diverse range of behaviour, experience, and expertise in dealing with sustainable development and climate change issues.Best practices and local expertise should be shared and acknowledged in strengthening climate education and fighting for climate justice.Some indigenous communities and nations have a direct vision and goals around the rights of mother earth and the relationship between humans and nature. They also consider intersectionality in relation to nature and linking to education and policy. Best practices and local expertise should therefore be shared and acknowledged in fighting for climate education and justice.

Young people and student movements also call for each country to ensure that all earners, regardless of where and how they learn, are provided with comprehensive and up-to-date teaching regarding the climate emergency and ecological crisis. They push for each country to transform education systems, ensure free access to impartial climate science and data, and take measures against the spreading of fake news and information.

Oxfam supports student movements and their strategic agendas nationally and regionally and facilitates links between countries so that the perspectives of the people most affected by and least responsible for the changes are heard, including the views of women and Indigenous communities and movements. It includes ensuring that the inequality and injustice of the climate emergency are on the agenda of the global climate movement. Oxfam can broker such international connectivity, facilitating and encouraging global solidarity in climate justice through grassroots work in local communities.

Oxfam supports students and young people in influencing curricula and content reforms at regional and national levels. Oxfam also supports their calls for action to fight the racial, gender and class inequalities of the climate emergency, including the loss of education that impacts the most affected people and areas.

Case Story

Mock COP26

Oxfam UK

In order to fight the global climate crisis, global solidarity and action is needed. Around the world, young people are organizing in the name of climate justice. They already constitute strong and important voices; and if they unite, the potential for creating sustainable solutions that reduce the inequality and injustice of the climate crisis is huge. Mock COP26 is a great example hereof. When the 2020 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) was postponed due to COVID-19, 330 young delegates from 142 countries gathered online to show world leaders and the global community what an ambitious, yet realistic COP would look like.

Mock COP26 is an international youth-led project supported by Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS) UK and International. The Mock COP26 event took place from 19 November to 01 December 2020 comprising 330 delegates in the age 11-30 years. 72% of the delegates were from the Global South and 63% were female or non-binary. The event culminated in a treaty comprising 18 policy asks centered around 6 important themes; climate education, climate justice, climate-resilient livelihoods, physical and mental health, nationally determined contributions, and biodiversity.

Following the Mock COP26, a letter was shared with world leaders to call for immediate and ambitious climate actions based on the treaty, and to request improvement upon the structures of the real COP to reflect the mandate of young people.

Phase two of the project is centered around supporting delegates to campaign for their leaders to implement the treaty, in part or whole. 8 young delegates from 6 countries were present when COP26 finally took place in Glasgow during November 2021. Here, they carried out a number of campaigning activities, whereof the above provides some highlights:

  • Lobbying Mock COP treaty asks: The representatives met with the President of Columbia, the President of Ghana, Prime Minister of Thailand, Prime Minister of Norway, Vice-President of the European Commission, and other high-level officials and handed them a postcard with the treaty asks.

  • Lobbying Climate Education: Speaking at a panel discussion, the Mock COP26 delegation highlighted the importance of mandatory climate education which should provide comprehensive and up-to-date teaching regarding climate and ecological crises and the need for it to be accessible to everyone.

  • My Climate Reality: Five VR videos were screened in the Green Zone of COP 26. The videos feature young people from Philippines, Uganda, Columbia, India, and Brazil and show what it feels like to be on the front lines of the climate crisis. Meet Rakesh from India and Dani from Columbia just below.

So far, we have seen progress with regards to implementation of the treaty (or parts of it) in several countries, including Finland, Nepal, Turkey and Nigeria. In Nigeria, the president has signed a new climate change bill into law, which captures some of Mock COP26’s demands around climate justice, national determined contributions (NDC’s)and climate education. In Turkey, Mock COP26 delegates have been campaigning to get the Turkish government to rectify the Paris Agreement –which was achieved in October 2021. Furthermore, 23 countries submitted pledges on Climate Education during the EMS summit at COP26.

So far, the project has proven the importance of organizing collectively on a global scale to amplify the voices of young people and including the perspectives of indigenous-and other marginalized communities that are often left out. Mock COP26 continue the work to have their treaty implemented but it is for sure that with their joint forces, they have already created a solid foundation to demand action.

 

“Today, faced with the decline of the population of species that sustain our cultural identity, we would be facing a cultural massacre” - Daniela Balaguera

Learn more about the Mock COP26 below.