On the road to Copenhagen

In a series of blog entries over the months leading up to the momentous UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next December, children will be voicing their views and charting the action they've taken on the road to Copenhagen.

Supported by Children in a Changing Climate, an NGO consortium dedicated to promoting children's voice to bring about a climate deal fit for their futures, these views and activities will be conveyed to the global UN climate change arena.

In the first blog entry, below, Janani Vivekananda writes about the views of children in Sierra Leone on the subject of climate change. Janani is Plan UK's Disaster Risk Reduction Policy and Advocacy Adviser, and one of the NGO coalition representatives of the Children in a Changing Climate (CCC) programme.

Children in a Changing Climate is a global collaborative action-research, advocacy and learning programme that aims to secure children's influence in preventing and adapting to climate change at every level - from their families and communities to the United Nations climate change negotiations.

Janani's blog

Talking to a group of Sierra Leonean children in their school in Port Loko - a district neighbouring the capital Freetown - I found myself wondering just how much these children could be concerned about climate change. With such tangible concerns facing them, such as whether there will be any rice for them to eat for dinner or if their parents will be able to scrape together enough to pay for next term's fees, do they really care about this abstract concept of climate change?

A short way into discussing the issues that concerned them and the answer was clear. They are already living with the consequences of climate change: many were living on mangoes rather than rice as their main meal because this year's rice harvest had failed due to the rains, their schooling is being disrupted whenever the heavy rains make their river crossing to get to school impossibly dangerous.

'You people in the first world, can you please fix the hole in the ozone layer?' asked 10 year old Joseph. This earnest question brought home the absolute lack of justice in the climate change story.

These children have done the least to cause the dangerous climate change impacts we all face. Sierra Leone's per capita carbon dioxide emissions are just 0.2 tonnes per capita - 55 times lower than the UK's 11.2 tonnes per capita. And yet these children are already having to deal with the consequences.

But they weren't feeling sorry for themselves. Nor were they casting blame. Instead, the children were full of optimism and ideas of how they could adapt to be more resilient to the climate related risks they face.

For example, how they could make their school walk safer with modest resources to reinforce the bridges so that they weren't so easily swept away, and how their parents could be trained in other skills so that they didn't have to resort to cutting down much needed trees - which the children understood served as flood defences - to sell as firewood.

The international community has until December 2009 to set in place an agreement which will determine whether or not Joseph and his classmates will have a future safe from dangerous climate change. There are four main issues at stake: by what percentage industrialised countries will commit to reducing their emissions, how much they will assist the developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change, how to finance climate change activities, and the transfer of technology to promote low carbon development.

Children around the world will be the ones living with the decisions reached once the generation making the decisions are long gone. And children have a lot to say on the issues.

The next entry will be from Nurul, 16, from Indonesia, who will share her reflections on progress at the UN Climate Conference from Poznan.

Read Plan's blog at Alertnet.org