Biggest-ever youth gathering on climate change begins

Emerging leaders representing three billion people - the children and youth of the planet - will converge on the Republic of Korea to voice their demands for action on climate change at the Copenhegen meeting.

The Tunza International Children and Youth Conference, in Daejeon (Republic of Korea) on August 17-23 will be the biggest youth gathering on climate change before the UN climate conference in December.

By staking their claim to a low-carbon, resource-efficient, environmentally sustainable future, the generation that will inherit the planet will also remind the world that they have the greatest stake in the creation of the green economy of tomorrow.

UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) Achin Steiner said: "The Tunza Children and Youth Conference is an important gathering of young people and an opportunity for them to discuss and to prepare their positions surrounding Copenhagen and climate change, but it is more than that.

It is a gathering of the generation that will inherit the outcome of the decisions taken in December and beyond".

"For it will be in the lifetime of the three billion children and young people alive today that the glaciers of the Himalayas will either persist or melt away, that the sea levels will stabilize or rise, swamping a third of Africa's coastal infrastructure; that the Amazon will remain the lungs of the planet or become an increasingly dried-out and disappearing eco-system, and the polar bear will continue as the iconic species of the Arctic or, like the Dodo and the dinosaurs, merely an artifact in the world's natural history museums," he added.

The participants were selected from thousands of applicants based on their outstanding green achievements on their home turf - and the impressive range of initiatives illustrate just how much today's children and youth understand and want to commit to the environment.

The Children and Youth Conference is part of the global UN-wide "Seal the Deal" campaign being spearheaded by Un Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to galvanise political will and public support for reaching a comprehensive global climate agreement. Over the coming months, the "Seal the Deal" campaign will mobilize over one million young people to march across one hundred capitals and deliver to global leaders their declaration of priorities on climate change as agreed at the Tunza Conference.