They’re back: Today’s Fridays for Future strike — the first in 18 months — will see youth activists taking to the streets again to push progress on solutions to climate change.
Here’s what you can do to raise awareness and seek solutions where you are.
Bali student journalists push to cover climate change summit in Morocco
A group of high school student journalists from Indonesia took to Facebook and YouTube today to protest after they were denied access to the COP22 climate change conference scheduled to begin next week in Marrakech, Morocco.
The video and petition, entitled “ALL access ALL ages,” asks the UN to allow students from Green School in Bali and an affiliated program called Earthbound Live to access the so-called “Green Zone” civil space that is part of the UN’s annual “Conference of the Parties.”
The COP focuses on building community and finding solutions to the world’s global warming crisis. Traditionally, the UN offers a public “civil” space where student journalists and others can meet with speakers, view exhibits, and gather information about conference topics.
“Our first day in Morocco was spent creating this campaign because we found out that they are denying children and youth under 18 access to the civil space of the COP22 this year,” Earthbound Live teacher Sarita Pockell wrote in a Facebook post.
PLEASE SIGN NOW! The Green Zone has been denied to everyone under the age of 18 #ALLagesALLaccessCOP22 https://t.co/7GI5ByYT87
— gsgreengeneration (@greengeneration) November 4, 2016
Last year, COP21 was held in Paris and the public space was called “the Blue Zone.” Students from Green School and the American School of Paris covered that conference for Global Student Square in a special “Blue Zone” report.
The Green Zone page of this year’s COP22 website says that “(g)eneral public access to the Green Zone is by accreditation only. All those interested, aged 18 years old and above, must complete the form available online (at) http://visit.cop22.ma.”
As their video indicates, most of the students from Green School and Earthbound Live who are attending COP22 are below 18 years of age.
Students at Green School are internationally known for their work on environmental issues.
In October 2013, two Green School students — sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen, then in grades 6 and 7 — created a campaign called “Bye Bye Plastic Bags” aimed at banning the use, sale and production of plastic bags in Bali by January 2015.
Their efforts prompted teachers and students to write and produce “Noble Material,” a musical they performed at the UN’s request at COP21. Bali’s governor also agreed to ban plastic bags by 2018 and to require retailers to charge a fee for them beginning in 2016.
Melati Wijsen, now 15, is among the Bali students in Morocco for COP22.
In a Facebook post, GS Bali teacher Emily Ferguson shared a link to a petition that students will send to Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), asking for access to the conference, which runs from Nov. 7 to Nov. 18.
The petition can be found here.
Related Posts
