Youth4Nature is happy to announce the launch of Unearth Voices: From the Margins to the Mainstream, the third edition of our flagship Storytelling Campaign. Taking place between August and December, the campaign will collect stories from youth that explore how social, economic and political power shape plans, financing and solutions for climate and nature in their local communities and beyond. Want to add your voice/share your story? Read on to find out how!
Our Why
2025 is the year in which countries are expected to submit their updated plans to meet the Paris Agreement targets, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). A summary analysis released by the UN’s climate body in 2024 showed that existing plans, even if fully implemented, are insufficient to limit global warming to 1.50C, with devastating implications for people and nature. At the same time, while climate risks and hazards are increasingly felt and unavoidable for over 1.2 billion people, planning and financing for climate adaptation lag significantly behind the underwhelming action for mitigation.
Even at an institutional level, work to create and implement a universal framework to assess progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation has historically been slow, and only 74 countries have UN-submitted National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) out of the 195 that ratified the Paris Agreement in 2015-2016, with over 100 countries still developing theirs. This situation mirrors the progress towards implementing the new Global Framework to protect and conserve biodiversity: in spite of the agreed deadline of October 2024, updated National Biodiversity and Strategies Action Plans (NBSAPs) are outstanding for over 150 countries.
Although the current situation appears bleak, there is a silver lining. As countries continue to develop and update their NDCs, NAPs and NBSAPs, there remains an opportunity to ensure plans, and their financing and implementation, include 1) youth-led action, 2) respect international human rights treaties, 3) align with biodiversity science, and 4) promote local livelihoods (or a just transition, where necessary). Such principles are not only integral to doing right by the most vulnerable populations and ecosystems, they are also essential to the effectiveness and sustainability of policies and projects which often require the acceptance, participation and ownership of communities, and the resilience of natural ecosystems.
Our How
With the above in mind, Youth4Nature remains committed to seeing young people meaningfully shape the plans and policies that will determine the future of their livelihoods and communities, of the lands and waters they live on. Power acts as both an obstacle and a vehicle to achieve this, and highlighting its inner workings is a crucial step to understand what is working and what isn’t working with youth-led and locally-led action for climate and nature. That’s why Unearth Voices aims to centre the challenges and successes of youth, especially those from Indigenous, frontline and Global South communities, as key actors in implementation, moving us from the margins to the mainstream of climate and biodiversity action.
To this end, the campaign will connect and amplify the experiences of young people and youth-led groups implementing climate-nature initiatives that respect human rights, align with biodiversity science, and promote local livelihoods, leading by example. The stories will serve as case studies and learnings on how youth-led efforts already contribute to national and international plans and action, and how to better support and resource this, often un(der)compensated and self-funded, work. To help those looking to submit, Y4N will be releasing a series of resources that dig deeper into what power means and how it manifests socially, politically and economically in planning, financing and solutions for climate and biodiversity. We will also be running online capacity-building workshops, with dates to be announced soon.
All the received stories that meet our selection criteria will be showcased on our Glocal Climate-Nature Storymap, and their authors will be invited to join our Global Storyteller Community (and all its perks!). In addition, the upcoming UN “COP30” climate negotiations in Brazil will serve as a stage to reach out to policymakers and resource-holders by highlighting the most impactful and relevant stories through social media, meetings and events, including potentially on the ground at the conference itself (to be confirmed).
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