Description
From 3-4 September 2022, youth climate leaders came together for the Youth Dialogue on Adaptation Action, organized by the Global Center on Adaptation. Around 100 participants travelled to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to attend in person, with many more connected online. WYPW members participated in the Youth Dialogue to highlight the importance of water for climate adaptation, as well as in the regional youth adaptation forums, which collected youth perspectives on climate adaptation around the world between March and August 2022.
The urgency of accelerating climate adaptation in the face of increasingly visible climate change impacts around the world was palpable throughout the weekend. Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon addressed the event on Sunday, stating that “every day we delay adapting to climate change is another day wasted.” He also encouraged young people to demand better from their leaders and to hold them accountable to commitments made at international climate conferences: “You have the right to challenge your leaders.”
A key topic of discussion throughout the weekend was indeed how to push governments to deliver on commitments to double adaptation finance by 2025, made during COP26 in Glasgow. At the moment, international climate finance available for mitigation far outweighs finance available for adaptation, neglecting the urgent need for climate adaptation in many parts of the world. In addition, participants discussed possible inputs to the definition of a Global Goal on Adaptation, with efforts under the leadership of Omnia El Omrani, youth envoy to the COP27 presidency, to develop a youth-related goal.
At the local level, youth can play an important role as leaders of transformative adaptation. Empowering youth as champions of locally-led adaptation was identified as being particularly relevant to ensure that climate adaptation reaches the most vulnerable communities, such as indigenous communities, communities in small island developing states and the least developed countries, and refugees, both in camps and in host communities.
In an exchange with UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed, Joyce Mendez, water and environment advocate from Paraguay and Brazil, highlighted that climate action needs to recognize and actively incorporate indigenous communities and their knowledge, which has been preserved and passed on by communities for ages and can provide alternative adaptation approaches and technologies.
Throughout all climate adaptation, water is central. As summarized by Joep Verhagen, program lead on water and urban issues at the Global Center on Adaptation: “If energy is climate mitigation, then water is climate adaptation.”
