UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met with COP 30 youth delegates on Tuesday. At COP 30, the UN Secretary General called on young people to become more actively involved in the fight to phase out fossil fuels Climate and Environment
Participants at the UN Climate Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, are closer to agreeing on a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels. Ministers from Colombia, Germany, Kenya, the Marshall Islands, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom and several other countries expressed strong support for Brazil’s proposal to raise the issue in the current round of climate talks.
The coalition called on delegations to strengthen language on the fossil fuel transition in the draft text. Their ultimate goal: to accelerate action and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Fossil fuels are destroying dreams,” youth activist Marcel Oliveira said at the conference, calling the transition away from hydrocarbons “the most important step towards climate change for this generation.” justice.”
Protecting the future
Speaking to UN News Service, Marcela Oliveira stressed that children and youth must be at the center of every discussion at COP 30.
“We now have a ruling from the International Court of Justice that says that countries’ inaction on climate change is an environmental crime. We need to systematically pressure countries to take more ambitious climate decisions,” she said. “We must divest from fossil fuels, invest in protecting forests, and support those who protect them. Recognizing the role of youth collective action at the local level is important.”
Youth activist Marcel Oliveira.
“The Decisive Battle”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met with youth delegates in Belém. During the discussion, he acknowledged that past generations have failed to contain the climate crisis – the latest scientific forecasts confirm that global temperatures will exceed the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Secretary General called on young people to act as a united front in the “decisive battle” in order to make the exit beyond the established norm as short as possible.
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, Guterres stressed, is vital and requires confronting powerful lobby groups that “put profit above the well-being of the international community and the planet.” In this regard, he added, the pressure from young people is difficult to overestimate.
“We just want to be children!”
Sixteen-year-old João Victor da Silva from Brazil at a meeting with the Secretary General said that today’s young people did not intend to become activists, they just wanted to remain ordinary children and teenagers, but, according to him, “adults, unfortunately, do not make the right decisions.”
Niguel Maduro from Aruba said that on his island, the beaches where he once learned to swim are gradually disappearing. Negotiations, he warned, were moving too slowly for his state, which faces rising temperatures and rising sea levels.
The Secretary-General agreed that greater participation by young people – especially indigenous people – would lead to better results. He supported calls for more direct, less bureaucratic funding for Indigenous peoples and promised to create the conditions to make this possible.
Protests are a hallmark of COP 30
Indigenous leader Thai Surui called the meeting with young people “one of the most encouraging moments of COP 30.” But she warned that the Amazon is dangerously close to a “point of no return” that could lead the rainforest to desertification.
“Protests are a hallmark of this conference,” she said. – Some people may not like them, but Brazil is a democratic country. Protests will encourage political leaders to ultimately make pro-life decisions.”
The activist noted that corporate lobbying is so far stronger than the pressure of all delegations combined, and certainly more powerful than the voices of indigenous peoples. However, she sees a growing recognition of the role of indigenous communities as stewards of nature.