Global Youth Panel Debates Decisions of UN Climate Change Conference

Date:

December 7, 2009

Outcomes from the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP15, which runs from December 7-18, will be closely scrutinized and debated by more than 1,000 members of the Debatewise Global Youth Panel, with support from the Open Society Institute.

The group, ages 15 to 25 and from 140 different countries, will raise their arguments about the pros and cons of the conference using Google Wave, the new real-time communication and collaboration tool launched earlier this year.

The Debatewise Global Youth Panel delivers the views of those who will be most affected by the outcomes of COP15. The panel is motivated, not by global economic and politics, but by real fears and concerns about how climate change is affecting their lives and futures. Their debate will represent a unique perspective on what the Danish government describes as "The crucial conference - the last chance to reach an agreement that can be approved and ratified in time to come into force when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012."

The Global Youth Panel is being locally coordinated in each of the 140 countries involved. The panel includes those who have registered out of self-motivated concern, and invited participants who are already active on climate change issues. The debate will also give voice to a vital age group in some of the world's poorest countries.

Overview

Debatewise will organize a series of online debates to coincide with the Copenhagen limate change conference. As moderators of the debates, Debatewise will table the motions while various pro and con arguments for each debate will be created by volunteers from the Global Youth Panel. Some panel members will create the debates; others will vote on the debates. In this way we will provide a measure of how young people around the world think about events from the conference.

After the conference we will contact group panel members by country and ask them to debate how they will be impacted by the decisions the conference comes to. Brazil, for example, may wish to make a case against deforestation restrictions whilst the rest of the world may argue that they should suffer for the greater good. In this way, the decisions taken at Copenhagen will be given a personal and truly local context which we believe no one else is providing.