CSAYN team participated in the COP23 SDSN Side-Event, entitled “Supporting youth-led innovation to confront climate change: Opportunities for action”.
Ever since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement, a growing range of solutions-oriented initiatives have sought to provide support to youth-led innovations including those in business, charity, and education. The simultaneous objectives being to mobilize youth skills in support of global problem-solving and addressing the challenges young people face in creating and scaling-up their projects.
Some of these initiatives, including the Youth Solutions Report platform developed by SDSN Youth, the PANORAMA initiative, the WBCSD’s projects on social impact and climate-smart agriculture, and the Climates’ Program on Youth Visions for the Future, will be featured in the event as best practices in the field. The respective delegates will discuss the landscape of youth-led innovation, with emphasis on climate mitigation and adaptation, and will illustrate their recent activities focusing on youth solutions.
The session discussed the difficulties young innovators face in implementing their projects; including access to capital, access to knowledge, lack of visibility and the opportunities for overcoming these challenges with the help of investors, experts, policy-makers and other supporters from different sectors (government, private sector, public-private partnerships, NGOs).
In addition, the event explored the possibility of building capacity among young innovators for better impact assessment and data collection, monitoring and reporting, with a view to supporting increased youth involvement in transparency and accountability mechanisms.
Beyond the presentations, the event was turned out to be a space for young innovators to connect with partners, draw interest from potential supporters and detail their experience to policy-makers and all interested stakeholders. The event was held in the English language and opened to all participants.
Young innovators discussed mainly the global approach and challenges faced by youth-led innovators to confront climate change and other broader socio-economic challenges.
Partnership agreement for “Liter of Light Project” a rural community solar lighting distribution, that is to be implemented in CSAYN country chapters was discussed. The Terms of Conditions and Agreement document are to be sent by Director of Expansion and Partnerships, Luca Bucken.
