Iryna Ponedelnik: climate activism and its development is great, but young people must have a clear position.

Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition enabled them to express their ideas and offer concrete actions to solve the problem. The meeting took place shortly before the main climate event of the year - the ongoing UN Climate Conference known as COP26.

Iryna Ponedelnik was among the youth conference participants. Iryna has been involved in environmental issues for a long time with creation of her own Youth for Sustainable Development initiative, coordination of the VuzEcoFest Ecological Festival and so on.

We asked Iryna to share the details of her participation in the conference and her activities.

Please share your impressions of the recent youth conference. How did you prepare for the event?

In fact, there were no special arrangements. Before the conference, the participants could use the climate change knowledge sharing platform of the UN Secretariat and meet each other online to discuss the conference topics before we meet in person. There were four thematic areas: Youth driving ambition; Sustainable recovery; Non-state actors’ engagement; Climate-conscious society.  The platform also provided educational materials and courses on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), climate change and promotion.

Two weeks prior to the conference the participants were informed of the themes they were supposed to work on.  My theme was Sustainable recovery.  Later, one day before the conference, we were sorted into groups and given another theme. It was about the financial streams.  It should be noted that I had not worked on those themes before and I am not an expert in this area, either..

How did the conference go, and how was the delegates’ work organized?  What do you think of your participation in it, and what ideas did you manage to introduce?

The work would start with the morning presentations provided by the honoured visitors.  Then we would split up into groups and prepare the resolution together and work out the basic framework for the final presentation. I can’t say I liked that organization of work.  The time was not enough to develop suggestions for the resolution within the group. Besides, everyone brought up his or her own ideas and wanted them to make it into the final presentation.

Our group that was working on the financial streams theme was divided into those who were writing the resolution, and those, who were developing the framework for the presentation.  It happened that those who were developing ideas for the presentation spoke about green jobs, and I and my colleagues, who were working on the resolution, covered the issues of accountability and youth participation.

I can't say that I took an active part in all the activities of the conference, but the basic message that I tried to convey to my colleagues was the necessity to remember that we represented young people. I did not understand why my colleagues wanted to add to the resolution the issues already mentioned in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, various declarations and UN resolutions. In my opinion our task is to focus on young people.

Just at the last minute one of my colleagues added the part about funding. The text sounded something like this: "To allocate a billion dollars to youth organizations in sub-Saharan Africa who are working on climate projects.” Unfortunately, his suggestion neither specified where the billion was supposed to be taken from nor did it explain what a youth organization is and what a climate project is.

And here I should probably say that climate activism and its development is great, but young people must have a clear position. Simply to say that things are bad is not enough. Decision makers often do not want to get the gist of climate crisis as I see it. This results in a lot of different problems both in the area of youth policy and promotion, and in the field of science communication.

The last day of the conference gathered representatives of delegations to the Pre-COP ministerial meeting before the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow. So many young people hoped for a dialogue, where they would ask their questions and hear the leaders’ promises to do something for climate action. It was not to be. The leaders agreed that climate change was real and talked about the measures taken for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Were any novel or unexpected suggestions and ideas expressed at the summit? If yes, can any of the suggested ideas be applied in Belarus?

One issue is relevant for Belarus now: actions aimed at human rights promotion and protection and reopening of liquidated environmental organizations.  Unfortunately, full-scale and, most importantly, safe work of activists, experts, and non-governmental organizations is not possible today.

You work on promotion and popularization of environmental issues and raise awareness of the youth about the climate agenda. What resonates with this audience most of all, and what are the most effective means of work with them?

In projects where I worked before, we used to discuss climate change adaptation in Belarus with young people. Now I work in CAN EECCA (a regional branch of CAN (Climate Action Network), an international climate network of environmental nongovernmental organizations in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia), where we implement a project to involve young people of the region in climate crisis issues, we introduce young people to different tools and never forget to talk about activists' rights and recovery after work.

To foster a dialogue with the youth and to get to know their opinion is very important. This is the most important thing.  I often see that educational programs whose target audience is young people, are, in fact, not tailormade for them.

Climate change is a challenge not only for the governments but also for common people. What were your first steps on the path to a more environmentally sustainable life? When did you take interest in climate and ecology issues? What simple actions in everyday life can help live a more environmentally sustainable life?

It didn't start with riding a bike or sorting waste. I did not become a vegetarian and did not take up plogging (collecting garbage while jogging) or helping local non-profit organizations either, because I did not live in Belarus at the time. But I understood that I was interested in management, expertise, educational activities, organization of SDG, and that's exactly what I was doing. I organized the Youth for Sustainable Development initiative and became the coordinator of the VuzEcoFest Festival of environmental development for universities in Belarus, in which four Belarusian universities took part. At that time I knew a lot about sustainable development and SDG, about legal aspects of environmental protection but not about climate change and separate waste collection, for example. However knowledge, just like actions, comes when we develop ourselves. We can start simple: consume less, sort glass and paper, use public transportation and bicycles, help non-profit organizations and educate ourselves and people in our life.