Youth Action for Climate Change Awareness, Education and Research by UPHAR

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Pitch

Youth campaign urging for the UN Decade for ClimateChange Awareness, Education and Research (2016-2025) and the UN Office on Climate Change.

Description

Summary

'Climate change is the biggest challenge facing the world' today and you can not deal it without high-level political will.

Almost all UN agencies are working on this very issue. Apart from UN agencies, EU, other NGOs and INGOs are also working heavily on this issue. There are several international, regional and national level realistic policy frameworks on climate change. Ever year we organize numbers of high level climate change talks, seminars, trainings etc.

However we feel that this is the time to spread awareness of climate change in every corner of the world. We need to innovate new technologies and tactics to deal climate change. How we could do that? There is a real need of formulating and implementing comprehensive activities to tackle the 'biggest challenge' of the present world.  We need to educate our next generation to make them understand about the the issues of climate change properly. This will help to reduce environment pollution. We need to tell them the importance of having a green world. This will help to protect our environment. 

On this background, we are proposing to create a youth campaigning platform targeting the United Nations and urging to declare the ‘UN Decade for Climate Change Awareness and Research’ and to establish a full-fledged United Nations agency- the ‘UN Office on Climate Change’. This proposed youth platform would work in collaboration with different UN agencies and with other INGOs, NGOs working in the field of Climate Change.   

Category of action

Youth Leadership on Climate Change

What actions do you propose?

As we have mentioned in the summery of this proposal, we two main goals. Urging 

1) the UN to declare the ‘Decade for Climate Change Awareness, Education and Research (2016-2025)' and

2) to establish a full-fledged United Nations agency- the ‘UN Office on Climate Change’. 

Keeping these goals in our mind we propose the following actions:

International Level

1. Start worldwide campaigning targeting the Secretary General of the United Nations urging to work on our two main desired goals.
2. Urging the United Nations to create a fund especially for Climate Change Education at Primary, Secondary and University level.
3. Start international campaign targeting leaders of G7 countries and other world leaders to put pressure on the UN to work on our two main desired goals and also to allocate fund for these activities.
4. We also propose develop a ‘Climate Change Youth Ambassador Programme’:

• Two CCYA (1 Female + 1 Male / Third Gender) / each country
• Max. age 30

5.  We also propose to identify a public figure to act as UN Climate Change Goodwill Ambassador.

6.  Regional Climate Change Journalism Award- We propose awards for journalists who publish news and reports on climate change issues.

Conferences:

1. Climate Change Youth Ambassador Conference (Every year)- Organise in parallel with COP20 Lima COP21 Paris / IPCC / World Economic Forum / Davos etc. conferences.

National Level:

1. The country level youth ambassadors will lead campaign targeting their own governments.

• Urging their governments to create curriculum on climate change education for primary and secondary level schools.
• Asking for enough financial help / scholarship for students who are pursuing higher education / research on environmental studies and / climate change education.

2. The country level youth ambassadors will also organise seminars in schools, colleges and universities.

3. Inviting ideas to tackle climate change challenges and the best one will be supported by fund to implement the plan.

‘We Demand’ Campaign and Advocacy work:

• ‘We Demand’ SMS campaign: Mobile Short Codes (in countries with less Internet penetration rate) will be used to gather voice for ‘We Demand’ campaign. People will sign up to WEDEMAND campaign simply by sending an SMS. People will text ‘We Demand 1. UN Decade for Climate Change Awareness and Research; and 2. the UN Office on Climate Change’ to these codes to show their support.

• ‘We Demand’ Email Campaign: An email campaigning platform will be developed to gather support for the ‘We Demand’ Campaign. 

• For all proposed calls or campaigns, we would like to develop an interactive map with visual representation of numbers of messages received from each country. 

• All text and email messages will be delivered to the UN and other world leaders. 

Who will take these actions?

1. United Nations
2. European Union
3. G7 Country leaders and other international leaders
4. Country leaders
5. INGOs and NGOs
6. Business organisations
7. Educational Institutions
8. Media

What are other key benefits?

1. Awareness on environment pollution and on climate change.
2. UN agency on matters related to Climate Change
3. Creating Climate Change experts in every country and region
4. Less environment pollution and climate change impact.

What are the proposal’s costs?

Economic Cost:

1. Human Resource: 200,000 USD / Year
2. Virtual Office: 0/ Year 
3. Interactive and educational website development: 30,000 USD
4. International transport cost for Ambassadors: 240,000 USD / Year
5. Campaign and Advocacy work: 80,000 USD/ Year
6. Worldwide SMS Campaign: 300,000 USD
7. Travel Cost: 20,000 USD/Year
8. Country-wise fund allocation for advocacy work, meeting seminar etc: 360,000 USD / Year
9. Miscellaneous cost: 20,000/Year

Total: 1,250,000 USD

No negative side effects have been identified yet.

Time line

1. International Campaign urging the UN in it's 70th Regular Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 70) (15-28 September 2015) to declare the ‘UN Decade for Climate Change Awareness and Research (2016-2025)' starts Nov-Dec 2014.
2. First Climate Change Youth Ambassador Conference during COP 20, Lima, Peru (1-12 December 2014) discussing and setting up the further Youth Action Plan for Climate Change.
3. International call to create fund for the 'UN Decade for Climate Change Awareness, Education and Research'. Target UN, EU, G7 Leaders and other World leaders and get assurance for funding during COP 21 Paris.
4. Campaign to establish a full-fledged United Nations agency- the ‘UN Office on Climate Change’ starts January 2016.
5. Start developing educational resources for primary level Climate Change Education January 2016.
6. Start developing educational resources for primary level Climate Change Education January 2016
7. Establish an International Climate Change Research Institute in 2020.

Medium and Long term activities: Not yet identified. 

Related proposals

No proposal is fully related to this proposal. But I have noticed some proposals are either talking about climate change educational  programme /fundraising for climate change educational  programme or youth platform to raise awareness on climate change issues. But I wanted to knock high-level decision makers to deal Climate Change! 

However, I would like to make it very clear that if succeed, I / we would be more than happy to work with the following proposal developers. 

1. ​https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300901/planId/1308301 

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References

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