COP15 Post | News from the UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009

by Celia Thaysen

Listening to Ryan Baseanoo (26), a member of the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN), talk about his reasons for being here, with his passionate and positive attitude, you dare to believe that it will be up-and-coming youth activists like Ryan who may well succeed where the current old guard looks to be failing.

CYEN are here to promote awareness of the Caribbean islands’ issues and the Santo Domingo Caribbean Youth Declaration on Climate Change, and to work with the CARICOM (Caribbean Community) organisation by supporting them in their lobbying efforts.  Ryan, from Trinidad and Tobago, explains:

“We’re a bunch of young, energetic, efficient youths trying to fight for environmental issues. It’s very important to have this network because normally the Caribbean would be grouped together with Latin America, but their issues are very different.  At the end of the day, they are a big continent; we’re a group of small islands being affected just like the Pacific islands.”

The exhilaration Baseanoo feels being in Copenhagen surrounded by so many like-minded people, is palpable.

“It’s really been an amazing experience – just to breathe it all in.  To see so many around you so passionate about climate change issues really gives you a sense of hope.  That what you’re doing at home isn’t in vain; that the issues you face at home are not isolated; that other people around the world are also facing them.”

And the lessons that he and the ten other CYEN delegates are building up from being in close proximity to the delegates from CARICOM and AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) will be invaluable as they look towards the future.

“It’s been very interesting and very fruitful,” Ryan enthuses. “You learn through everyone – the delegation team and seeing the process and the workings of the UNFCCC.  Government officials and technocrats have been really supportive and are willing to work with us. To me, it’s the start of something good. Now we can carry that experience back to the Caribbean to make us better equipped and more prepared for COP16.”

As to building their network and developing co-operation with other groups, CYEN has already started.

“Interestingly, we met with a group from the Pacific islands and we came up with a document that we would like to lobby our leaders with.  You can see the collaboration.  This is the first time we’ve ever met but we came together as a group of young people to show the leaders that we don’t have to know each other to work together.  Climate change is affecting all of us.”

Baseanoo’s role models are his old lecturers at the University of the West Indies – Professor John Agard and Dr Leonard Nurse, both incidentally part of the IPCC team who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007.  With inspiration like this, it’s easy to understand why he got involved with CYEN.  But Ryan’s view on why young people are more environmentally conscious than the older generation stems from something more personal.

“A lot of the biodiversity and plant species in the Caribbean are disappearing fast – and who knows, they may even become extinct before our children get to see them.  That’s very sad.  So that’s why you find more young people getting interested in climate change issues.”

And from his experience in Copenhagen, Baseanoo believes that youth groups are now feeling more empowered than ever before.

“Young people are out there fighting and we really have a voice, when normally young people are not heard. With these climate change talks, you realise that young people have a say and it gives you hope to really move this on.”

Perhaps one of the redeeming features of COP15 is the knowledge and experience it has given the next generation of climate change politicians, advocacy groups and activists to take the climate agenda forward into the future.