Local Conference of Youth Seychelles |03 November 2022
Ms Larue addressing the gathering
Youth, children come together to learn and voice out concerns about environment
Youth and children of Seychelles came together last week to attend the Seychelles Local Conference of Youth (LCOY) at the STC conference room.
The LCOY is an event under the umbrella of YOUNGO, the official youth constituency at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
LCOYs are spaces that boost youth climate action locally and generate input for international conferences. It represents a national version of the internationalConference of Youth (COY), which takes place immediately before the Conference of Parties (COP), the annual UN-Climate Conference.In August 2021, the first YOUNGO-registered LCOY was launched by two young Seychellois, Victoria Alis and Jeremy Raguain, with the primary support of thedepartment of climate change and energy, the Ministry of Education and the British High Commission (BHC).
Ms Allis explained that during the four days they regrouped some 75 youth and children aged 13-35 in Seychelles to discuss various developments, challenges and solutions associated with the climate crisis in small island developing states.
Most of the young people who attended engaged in asking questions or provided comments at least once during the LCOY. Exposure to local and internationalexperts and professionals, who for some have taken tackling climate change as a career, business and/or life-long commitment, inspired and informed youngpeople on various climate change themes and problematics. It served as a great stepping stone to build towards the Pre-COP (Conference of Parties) and the COP.
One of the objectives of the 2021 LCOY was to facilitate the creation of a Seychelles LCOY organising committee by securing a pledge from key partners tocontinue such an initiative and structure. A partner statement was signed by the department of climate change and energy and the Ministry of Education. Toensure the LCOY’s continuity in Seychelles, Sids Youth AIMS Hub (SYAH) Seychelles ‒a youth-led non-governmental organisation (NGO) aiming to advance sustainable development projects in Seychelles, will be steeringthe Seychelles LCOY committee and leading the 2022 Seychelles LCOY.
The outcomes of this years’ edition are mainly to promote youth engagement in Seychelles’ Nationally Determined Contributions amongst 60-100 young people (15-30 years of age); To empower 60-100 young people (15-30 years of age) in becoming climate change advocates; To inspire 60-100 young people (15-30 years of age) to lead or take part in climate action in their community, school, or work environment’ and to create of youth-climate position statement on youth involvement in the implementation of Seychelles NDC and their general views onbuilding climate adaptation and resilience in Seychelles.
The completion of the Seychelles LCOY was followed by a short report consisting of the highlights of panel discussions, presentationsand ensuing discussions complied by the Seychelles LCOY committee.
Ms Alis shared that the work continues and we need to keep building capacity among the young people in order to face climate change that is happening.
Jeannette Larue, director general for public education and community outreach within the department of environment, noted that to celebrate the small islands states developing day, we coincide it with the climate change conference for the children.
“We feel that with the upcoming Conference ofParties (COP), the voice of the children is not being heard enough. They always see meetings and conferences on television, but they do not know much about it. This is why we asked one child from the different schools on Mahe, Praslin, La Digue including private schools to come and learn about COP and the position of small islands states vis-à-vis COP. At the end of the day, the children will be heard via messages, videos and songs. The children were quite active,” said Ms Larue.
Ms Larue added that she will continue to fight for the education of children on environmental issues and she is grateful for the good cooperation that exists between the Ministry of Education and department of environment to roll out their education plan.
This programme was financed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Lindy Bastienne, the national coordinator for small grants programme, shared that “we have focal areas in climate change mitigation and adaptation and our last set of projects was a special programme called youth and climate change innovation programme where we had six applications for projects and also implementing climate change projects with youth. We are working with various stakeholders and as LCOY was going to do a conference with the youth, we met with them and the department of environment to see how we can have one conference instead of three conferences. We agreed to fund the whole conference as we are contributing towards the education of the youth and children of the country.”
The conference ended with high hopes and the children and youth want their voices to be heard just as the young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
The accompanying photos show some highlights of the conference.
Vidya Gappy
Photos: Joena Meme
