A big ‘hallo’ to all of our readers from the Uni of Copenhagen!

It is 8.40am, and youth from all over the world are arriving for Day 2 of the Conference of Youth.

Tomorrow is the first day of the fifteenth Conference of the Parties, or ‘COP15′. The world is watching to see a global agreement forged to replace the Kyoto targets. We’ll be doing lots of blogging over the next two weeks, to keep you in the loop with our activities. Before we get started at COP15 though, we want to take this opportunity to introduce our team properly!

COP14 in Poznan last year saw more youth involved in the negotiations than ever before. However, it was also clear that great inequities existed in youth representation, just as was the case in the negotiations.

It was this that triggered the birth of Project Survival: the notion that the youth movement had to work towards becoming truly global. An American Project Survival team emerged to support the Carribean. A European group emerged to support Africa. Project Survival Media emerged to promote a strong, united message internationally. And in Australia, Project Survival Pacific was born.

We share a vision of a world in which no peoples, species, ecosystems or cultures are threatened by the effects of climate change.

The Australian base team of Project Survival Pacific came together in May this year. Five young Aussies have been living in the Pacific working on climate-related issues. Another twelve are working on the Project within Australia.

At COP15, Project Survival is represented, not only by our Australian base team, but by a team of eleven young Pacific Islanders. We are also collaborating heavily with our colleagues from other parts of the world.

The Conference of Youth has been a fantastic chance for our team to reflect on the year that has passed since Poznan. There have been challenges, set backs and periods of doubt for every one of us.

But looking around the plenary hall at Copenhagen, it is clear that the international youth movement has had an incredible year. Over 160 ‘Global South’ youth have received funding to attend the negotiations- meaning that a larger, more diverse group of young people is represented than ever before.

We at Project Survival are thrilled to be back at COP, and can’t wait to share our stories with the world.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 5:31 pm and is filed under featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.