The Strategic Youth Network for Development(SYND) yesterday held its National Pre-COP27 Youth Summit in Accra.
Held on the theme “Dialogue with climate negotiators”, the summit was aimed at bringing young advocates and climate negotiators to deliberate on issues of loss and damage towards COP27 and Ghana’s position this year at COP27 to be held in Egypt.
Similarly, it is to showcase the works of young people in the climate change space who are contributing to the course of attaining the various sustainable Development Goals in relation to climate change.
SYND Ghana is a youth-oriented non-governmental organization that promotes Youth Inclusion in the governance of the National Resources and Environmental(NRE) sector.
Its operates in four thematic areas namely Forestry, Climate Change, Biodiversity and Energy Access. It is also the Convener of the Youth in Natural Resources and Environmental Governance(Youth-NREG) Platform as well as the West Africa Regional Node for Access Coalition.
At a press conference before the Summit, Chinese Ezekiel, the Executive Coordinator of SYND Ghana, emphasized on the need to increase support for young people to participate in global climate change discourse.
For him, effective engagement and participation of young people was needed to build resilience against climate change.
He said in July 2022 his outfit commenced a road to COP27 monthly webinar series to demonstrate the proactiveness and willingness of young people to make their voices heard in the climate change discourse.
“Based on the key issues from the webinars, we recommend the establishment of a loss and damage facility with substantial financing annually from the Global North to highly vulnerable countries that are facing mass destruction as a result of the climate crisis, increase finance for adaptation, commit to increase support for young people to participate in global climate change discourse, accelerate global energy transition” he stated.
He again called on world leaders to ensure they acted on all the beautiful and juicy pledges that they will make at COP27 .
BY BENEDICTA GYIMAAH FOLLEY
