Climate Smart Agriculture

Check out this article and podcast I wrote published by the Pulitzer Center on Climate Smart Agriculture and the Future of Food

Don’t Think Youth Can Make a Difference? Think Again: The Role of Youth at the Paris Climate Talks, COP21.

Sick and tired of hearing that ‘nobody listens to youth,’ or ‘one person can’t make a difference’?

If so, it is time for a trip to an international environmental conference. This past December, I attended the Paris Climate Talks or COP21. There, youth were some of the first to arrive and last to leave- never ceasing to demand serious climate action.

Nearly 5,000 youth arrived in France a week before official negotiations for the Conference of Youth, a meeting organized by youth organizations around the globe. Here people learned about the climate agreement and methods to take action.

This momentum led into the two weeks of official climate talks. Youth groups demanded strict government regulations to reduce the blow of climate change- recommending actions like sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a temperature increase restricted to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century, and decisions that consider both people today and those of the future.

There is a youth non-governmental organization, YOUNGO, which was formed six years ago to give youth a larger stake in the process. There are two members of YOUNGO who are allowed to communicate information out to the government officials. However both young and civil society groups are in the clear minority in the rooms where negotiations took place.

According to a member of the Sierra Student Coalition, Katie Gibson, only nine badges were permitted to the 70 incredibly well-informed members of the Sierra Club attending the conference. Youth, who made up about a quarter of the 70 members, were lucky to share two of the nine badges. But even with two badges, students in the coalition made it work switching up who received the prized badge every couple of days. And whoever went into the conference room that day tracked down negotiators, trying to get their ear and persuade them to support strong climate legislation. They were strong, persistent and when push came to shove, feisty.

“These are not things that I was not involved in creating so we have to leverage the space in a way that we are heard and understood and we are going to hold [government leaders] accountable. So that is why we are [here]. And we will continue to do this no matter what,” Gibson said.

With lack of accessibility into the negotiating room, youth found other ways to get their voices heard. Dyanna Jaye and Timothy Damon, leaders of SustainUS, a U.S. youth environmental advocacy group, said they generated attention around these issues through measures like demonstrations and social media.

"[Youth] are really calling countries to task," Damon said.

One of SustainUS’s primary goals is to decarbonize the global economy by 2050. This would require equal amounts of “carbon sinks” or places to absorb carbon like oceans and forests as the amount of emission outputs. To demonstrate this concept, youth drew an “O” around their right eye to represent zero-net emissions by 2050.

Youth were instrumental in some of the largest demonstrations reminding political leaders that they were in Paris, and demanding action.  Actions included the placement of 10,000 pairs of shoes in a Paris square (representing the number of people ready to march for climate action and social justice), to “fracktivist” rallies where youth demanded that “oil stay in the soil.”

And the noise didn’t stop in person. Hundreds of thousands of videos, podcasts, tweets and posts flowed out of the mouths of protestors onto the walls of social media.

And the pinging of the phone followed me back to the youth hostel where I was staying. Youth from around the world ended up sharing bunk beds and stories. The girl who lay in the bed next to me was from India and the boy in the bunk above me had be displaced from his home in Alaska due to rising sea levels. We talked about the environmental challenges in our own communities and shared solutions for the future. These conversations only began in the negotiation rooms and continued throughout the night, until the light shinning through the windows reminded us that it was morning.

Jaye explained one of the most important roles of youth: their “international identity.” Negotiators put their domestic concerns as number one, which can prevent necessary global action, she said. But youth, she added, stick with the big picture. Damon agrees.

"There is a generational identity taking priority over national identity," Damon said.

Damon acknowledges flaws in youth activism like a high turnover rate of students since nobody is paid for their work. Also, there was a clear majority of youth from the Global North, where the conference was held. Regardless of the flaws, he agreed with Jaye that the role of youth is fundamental. He recalled specific examples. In this year’s text, he worked with the Guatemalan negotiator to include the importance of “intergenerational equality concerns” in the preamble of the agreement. Other youth contributed to an “environmental education” component of the agreement.

And even when youth were quiet, their presence had an impact. During climate talks in Warsaw in 2013, Damon recalled that the youth put black tape over their mouths to represent their lack of representation at the table. As negotiators left the meeting, he remembers them coming over to the youth to ask about their concerns.

Youth are not only active at the conference, but also when they come home.

"While youth bring an international perspective, they are still domestic actors," Damon said.

As domestic actors, youth can take what they learned from all of their experiences ranging from late night talks with the students sleeping in the bunk above them to the message of a girl speaking up at a rally.

I, for one, look forward to bringing those lessons home.

Students represent what they believe is the relationship between the oil industry and the public.

Spoken Word Artists Speak Up Against Climate Change

Students from around the world have come to share their stories at the UN climate change talks. Four students won the Spoken Word 4 The World Competition, a spoken word art competition. They went to COP21 in Paris to share their stories of how their communities had been impacted by climate change.  I had the privilege of sitting down with Isabella Avila Borgeson and Terisa Tinei Siagatonu, two of the competition winners whose Pacific Island communities have already been  affected my Climate Change. 

They each share their stories and recite their poems for me. They work off of each other, and right as one says something heartfelt and powerful, the other one is the first one to respond with a comforting "yeah sis" or a deep "umhmmm." They are not actually sisters but they share an experience- both their communities have been effected my changing weather patterns. 

Here is the segment Isabella has written under her Youtube video to describe her story. 

On November 8, 2013, super typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda) hit my mother's hometown of Tanauan, Leyte in the Philippines. 

I moved back to Tanauan one month after the typhoon to help my mother rebuild our home, and stayed for the next 2 years working as a community organizer on relief/rehabilitation projects throughout Region VIII. 

Learning about my family's stories of death and trauma surrounding the Ocean was a vivid part of my experience. In my community/family/motherland, climate change means re-learning the Ocean. I was always taught that the sea is a sacred place, where I come to speak to my ancestors and find healing in salt waters. With the increased intensity and frequency of natural disasters hitting island countries like the Philippines as a direct result of global warming, my family's relationship to the sea is changing. 

The ocean is now a mass grave of family members and townsfolk whose bodies were washed away by storm surge waves during the super typhoon.

This piece, titled "Yolanda Winds" is dedicated to my mother, a survivor of the super typhoon, who struggles to forgive the sea. A reminder that we are a people of the sea. And for some of our families, sharing our stories about climate change, typhoon seasons, and rising oceans - is an act of resistance, necessary for our survival. 

Other Spoken Word Artists have made a splash in previous Climate Change Conferences. Here is Kathy Jetnil-Kijner from the Marshall Islands. At the end of the segment, she recites her poem which she has written for her daughter to talk about what the future of climate change means to her community. 

Alaskan with a Disappearing Home

Esau Daniel Sinnok is a delegate of the Sierra Student Coalition and an Arctic Youth Ambassador for the Arctic Council. He lives in Shishmaref Alaska, where he is already feeling the effects of Climate Change. Shishmaref loses 2-3 meters of land each year due to climate change, storm surges and rising sea levels. 

I met Esau because he was sleeping in the bunk above me at our Youth Hostel, Le Generator, in Paris. He filled me in on what was happening at home. Sinnok's family had to move when he was a kid due to rising sea levels. In June 2007, his uncle fell through the ice in a spot that was normally solid during that time of the year. Since then, he has seen regular changes in his day-to-day life. Because ice doesn't form until later in the season, his community can't go hunting when they normally do. But the greatest threat is that all of Shishmaref, Alaska will be under water in 25 years.

Esau came to the conference to get the message out there. He wishes youth activists like himself could get into the negotiation rooms to get their stories told, but as a youth he also feels empowered.

"We are the future leaders of the world."

Biodynamic Farmer from Nepal

I meet Sudarshan Chaudhary, a 33-year-old farmer from Nepal. On the Paris metro during the UN Climate Talks, COP21, I overheard him talking about a new type of organic farming he was using on his farm, biodynamic farming.   Intrigued, I introduced myself and quickly learned more about how Sudarshan was adjusting to climate change. He is incorporating new natural methods to increase productivity on the farm- like using small ponds to collect rainwater and cow dung as fertilizer. Below are two segments of Sudarshan telling his story.

A little more about him: After talking a class from a New Zealand farmer, he learned different practices of biodynamic farming and changed his traditional synthetic –based pesticide farm into an all organic farm that works with natural cycles. He then started to teach seminars in his village. His community didn’t believe him that cow dung would lead to just as productive soil as fertilizers. But he gave it to them to try and the villagers found that it worked miracles. He is now trying to build the momentum in his community by “making youth circles” where the young farmers can lease land in their community for community-based biodynamic farming. Ultimately, his dream is to start a School of Farmers.

Sudarshan believes that cows are necessary for agriculture because they provide “dung” for an alternative, all-natural, fertilizer—compost, and his community uses the manure for bio-gas to supply electricity to more than 40 households in his village. 

Sudarshan recalls that after talking a class from a New Zealand farmer, he learned different practices of biodynamic farming and changed his traditional synthetic –based pesticide farm into an all organic farm that works with natural cycles. He then started to teach seminars in his village. His community didn’t believe him that cow dung would lead to just as productive soil as fertilizers. But he gave it to them to try and the villagers found that it worked miracles. He is now trying to build the momentum in his community by “making youth circles” where the young farmers can lease land in their community for community-based biodynamic farming. Ultimately, his dream is to start a School of Farmers.