Role of Youth for Climate Action

"THE YOUTH IS THE HOPE OF OUR FUTURE''

 Youth is the most important and dynamic segment of the population in any country. It is believed that developing countries with large youth populations could see tremendous growth, provided they invest in young people’s education, health and protect and guarantee their rights. We can undoubtedly say that today’s young are tomorrow’s innovators, creators, builders, and leaders.

Any individual between the age of 15 and 30 comes under the category of youth, regardless of gender. The youth are the backbone of a society and hence they determine the future of any given society. This is because all other age groups, the kids, teenagers, middle-aged, and senior citizens rely on the youth and expect a lot from them. This makes the youth to be an important age group in both today’s society and the future society than other age groups. Therefore, due to the high dependence on youth in society, we the youth have a role to play because the future of our families, communities, and the country lies in our hands. This new generation has an increasingly strong social and environmental awareness, energy, and knowledge to lead our societies towards a low carbon and climate-resilient future. Young people are actively engaged at local, national, and global levels in raising awareness, running educational programs, conserving our nature, promoting renewable energy, adopting environment-friendly practices, and implementing adaptation and mitigation projects. 

Global warming, and its effect on climate, is one the most pressing issues facing the world today. It is a meta-problem that exacerbates most other challenges that keep us up at night – from sea level rise or the loss of natural resources to increased conflict, poverty, and gender inequality. Almost every country in the world has issued their own environmental laws in order to minimize the effects of climate change and a lot of ads, slogans, posters, and campaigns against climate change have been launched by concerned environmental organizations and government institutions in order to raise awareness to the public of how we could stop this global crisis. But it's sad that out of billions of people in the world today, only a few have responded to the call.
Despite much already having been written on the urgency with which we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pull carbon out of the air, and redesign our social-environmental systems towards new ways of doing business, most decision-makers, from individual consumers to world leaders, have been excruciatingly slow to take action.
Younger generations, however, seem to be clued into the reality that there are indeed climate solutions to this global problem. "The climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change,” said Nobel Prize nominee Greta Thunberg in her 2018 TED talk.

When a climate change occurs, temperature drastically increases which may lead to different changes on the earth. It can result in floods, droughts, intense rain more frequent and severe heat waves, and melting of ice glaciers which results in the sudden rise of Earth's water volume in seas and oceans. Some major factors which cause climate change are the burning or combustion of fossil fuels to produce energy which can be found in fueled vehicles and some factories. Smoking activities such as burning emit a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which results in greenhouse formation. Deforestation, Pollution, and other illegal activities of man are also contributing factors. 

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

Solutions abound, both scientifically proven and financially feasible. They are interventions that can shift the way the world does business. The global economy is based on extractive and exploitative growth models, spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through fossil fuel combustion, land conversion, and excessive consumption of everything – but the economy does not need to be.

Instead, renewable energy options, such as solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, and geothermal plants, can produce clean, abundant access to electricity, which currently accounts for approximately 25% of global emissions. Along with enabling technologies like energy storage and grid flexibility, renewable energy systems can fully replace coal, oil, and gas-fired power plants. A plethora of options are available to move people and goods from Point A to Point B that reduce or avoid burning fossil fuels from the tailpipe. Hybrids or electric vehicles are a good choice for medium or long-distance travel, but biking, using public transport, or walking are better options for emissions and human health for most people’s By reducing food loss and waste and moving towards a healthy, plant-rich diet, all the extra emissions, and energy associated with producing, processing, packaging, distributing, cooking, and decomposing of food left uneaten or overconsumed could be avoided, while also providing sustenance to populations in need. Rather than cutting down forests and degrading wetlands to supply our rapacious appetite for meat, timber, and energy, protecting ecosystems can safeguard, expand, and create new carbon sinks. Adopting regenerative practices on current cropland, grassland, and degraded land can restore soil health and fertility, increase yield and provide the same abundance of materials without destroying the natural systems. daily lives. These are some of the most impactful decisions every individual can make every day to help solve the climate crisis

Taken together, implementing regenerative practices for agriculture and livestock management, adopting a plant-rich diet, and reducing food waste, could result in enough food being produced on current farmland to feed the world’s growing population, now until 2050 and beyond. Taking actions to change the food system from supply through demand can prevent the need to cut down forests for food production, with enough existing cropland to produce biomass to supply feedstocks for other materials such as bioplastics or alternative concrete.

                                                                                                                                By- Vaanya Badhwar