“It is late, but not too late.”

In one of the seminar rooms sat a group of nervous girls and boys in orange t-shirts waiting for their moment in the spotlight and their chance to represent their country at the Youth Day at the UN Climate Change Conference.

Over an hour, the young people got to talk about what had gone wrong in their country and what they had done about it. In Bolivia, floods make daily life difficult; the country’s representative showed a film where water was gushing down the roads. In Haiti, climate change has facilitated erosion, which is literally eating up the country. Floods as a result of hurricanes have also become much more common, and the young Haitian at the seminar explained that when the floods are at their worst, it is water that is in scarce supply – clean drinking water.

The young man from Bangladesh does some work as a journalist, just like we young reporters. He talks about the increasingly frequent cyclones, which disrupt all aspects of life in Bangladesh. There is major damage and everything suffers, even the schools.

Planting trees
Fortunately, these young people and organisations have a plan, or more accurately, a number of plans, to help the environment. In a number of countries, trees are being planted to restore balance and many are trying to get the local population involved in this major task. The most important thing is for women and children to become more knowledgeable and take part in the construction of roads, for example. Getting children to dare to say what they think and to know that they have the right to be involved in decisions that affect them, such as on climate change, is extremely important.

Climate change affects all
A good thing about the work on climate change is that people have become more aware that everyone needs to help and that climate change affects us all. The representative from Bangladesh intends to continue trying to make even more people aware of climate change. We need to know what difference we can make and how we can make it. Let us conclude this articles with his final words into the microphone: “today we are young, tomorrow we are leaders”.

Pernilla Svensson, Linnéskolan, Hässleholm