Filipino youths demand strong climate agreement at UN

Press Release
December 3, 2015

PARIS, France – While world leaders and negotiators continue to meet in Paris to address the global climate crisis, on the Youth and Future Generations day at the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 21st Conference of Parties (COP21), Filipino millennials demand parties to address the worsening effects of climate change through an ambitious and strong agreement to limit and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Transmitted to the UNFCCC Secretariat today, the Filipino Youth Statement on Climate Change, which was formulated and developed by Filipino youth participants in a series of regional consultations and workshops in the country through the Road to Paris campaign of the Climate Reality Project (CRP), further demands a “global goal to phase-out fossil fuels by 2050 and limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and form as well as strengthen existing mechanisms on adaptation, loss and damage, technology transfer and finance to help climate vulnerable countries such as the Philippines.”

“Climate change is a social justice and human rights issue and demand that the Government of the Philippines in cooperation with all parties to the UNFCCC to come up with an ambitious, party-driven, gender-sensitive and participatory climate agreement,” the statement declared.

“We held workshops and consultations across the country explaining not only the basics of climate change, but the basics of climate policy and the negotiation process as well. In these sessions, participants were divided into four workstreams – adaptation, mitigation, climate finance and capacity – building – and asked to identify three to five priorities that they believe the Philippines as well as all parties to the UNFCCC should put forward in COP 21. Emulating the negotiations, the youth leaders were given time to meet with their groups to lobby for matters they thought most urgent,” said Rodne Galicha, Philippine manager of Climate Reality Project, a global movement founded by Nobel Laureate and former US vice president Al Gore with a mission to catalyze a global solution to the climate crisis by making urgent action a necessity across every level of society.

“From 2015 and COP 21 onwards, The Filipino Youth Statement on Climate Change will be the annual culmination of Climate Reality Project in the Philippines’s youth campaign. Aside from its policy advocacy and climate education efforts, we seek to properly represent the youth sector in the climate negotiations by providing areas for dialogue and collaboration between the youth and civil society, government, and the Philippine Delegation to the climate talks,” said Galicha.

Learning from the lessons of last year’s climate negotiations in Peru, then Philippine youth delegate to COP20 Marlex Tuson, who participated in the consultations, said that “The youth demands that a global transition to low-carbon societies be supported by all nations. COP21 will decide our future and that of our posterity, whether or not we will still be capable to sustain life. Thus, we firmly believe that our world leaders must be fully committed to exhaust all means to mitigate the effects of climate change.”

“We affirm our responsibilities as stewards of the environment, and recognize the need for participation in this global effort. We commit to act in our communities, and support the government and other agencies in programs for sustainable development,” said Tuson.

Beatrice Adeline Tulagan, CRP’s Road to Paris youth campaign director and former youth delegate to COP20, explained that “attending last year's COP as part of the Philippine delegation made me realize the imperative to bring down the negotiation process to the grassroots level and to the youth, who will someday inherit the responsibility of negotiating for their own countries. The employment of transparency through multi-sectoral consultations is the only way we can say that the Filipino youth and all Filipinos are properly represented in the climate talks.”