Young People To World Leaders at COP18: Your Climate Legacy Shapes The World We Inherit.

On Monday morning, negotiators from around the world poured into the Qatar National Conference Center for the first day of the COP18 United Nations Climate Talks, prepared for a long day of speeches on the technical details of multilateral environmental diplomacy. However, as they travelled down the moving walkway between security and the plenary hall they were confronted with the human face of climate change.’

Young people from around the world had flanked the walkway holding signs in multiple languages that reminded negotiators of the terrifying consequences that runaway greenhouse gas emissions have already begun imposing on people and the planet; droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, desertification, rising seas, biodiversity loss, and more.  At the bottom of each sign the youth posed the question “Will This Be Your #ClimateLegacy?”

Chart: Among youth, unemployment is not always the issue

From the World Development Report 2013

621 million young people are “idle”—not in school or training, not employed, and not looking for work. Rates of idleness vary across countries, ranging between 10 and 50 percent among 15- to 24-year-olds.

Source: http://blogs.worldbank.org  

Counting Costs of Climate Change. By Stanley Ijeoma

CLIMATE change has finally come home; yes our lives have been invaded by floods of fury and other freak weather events that we currently grapple with.  From Lokoja to Onitsha, down to Yenogoa and moving north of the Niger to Makurdi, Adamawa and Taraba; it has been tales of woe, sorrow, anger and disappointment.  Confusion and utter bewilderment were clearly written on the faces of the governors of these states–I do not know of any state governor or minister in Nigeria today, including the Federal Capital Territory, that has appointed a cabinet level Adviser or Special Assistant on Climate Change –strictly climate change, specifically! Climate change deserves to be unbundled from the environment portfolio –at least at advisory levels -because of its cross cutting nature that requires specialized multi-sectoral knowledge.