During the UNFCCC Intercessional we’ve noticed that a lot of our fellow youth know a lot about this process and we thought why not share their expertise with everyone?
One of our only YOUNGO representatives from the global south, we are happy to see that Raquel made the journey to Bonn to be with us. She is used to working globally through her international work at Adopt a Negotiator and domestic work at Engajamundo. Read about what she means by ‘sexify the COP’ and what she is doing to insure that every Brazilian child has no trouble identifying what the ‘Kyoto Protocol’ is.
Raquel Rosenberg, Adopt a Negotiator, Engajamundo
Why are you here?
I am here because I believe we can make a difference in the future because I believe we can make a different in the climate impacts we are seeing right now and avoid them.
What is the most important issue for you here?
Definitely the article 6 which is about education training, public participationg, oublic awareness and access to information because as engajamundo in Brazil we are capacity building workshops with young people in the five regions of Brazil. We do not have any kind of educaiton on climate change so there is still a huge percentage of the population that doesn’t know what is climate change and what is happening to our world.
Young people should know that they can be part of the solution. There’s a lot of small things that you can change in your habits and your life. They’re going to affect young people can do and it’s going to affect the people around you. What we need to do is to change our behavior. If we as consumers change our habits, the impact of it in the world is going to be the biggest one. So we do depend on the political leaders but we are also a part of the solution.
How would you explain what you doing here to your grandmother?
I wouldn’t explain this to my grandmother because we have this ‘sexify movement’. The main objective is to sexify climate change! Not in a sexual way but making it more attractive and using language that you can connect with young people. The idea is that you can say those things that are being said here in a ‘sexify way’. So i would say that all the industry and energy and deforestation that we have been doing for the last 100 years are making a huge a hole in our planet. We need to fix this hole or humanity won’t survive here. It’s not about protecting the planet because the planet is going to stay here but we as human beings are threatened by this huge climate change thing.
Final words?
Be part of the solution and join us!