Opinion: Future of climate change movement rests on leadership

The New Zealand youth delegation to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima. The story's author, Dewy Sacayan, is third from the right. Photo / Supplied

Dewy Sacayan was a member of Aotearoa Youth Leadership Institute delegation to the 2014 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Lima Peru.

It is hard to be positive when you realise your leaders are a long way away from giving you a future you can look forward to.

Being a youth delegate to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's Conference of the Parties (COP) in Lima, I hoped to see countries cooperate and compromise with one another.

Instead, I saw poorer countries blaming richer countries for historically burning fossil fuel to power their economies 100 years ago. I saw richer countries' insufficient help (or in some cases unwillingness to help) poorer, calamity vulnerable countries adapt by not committing funds to the Adaptation and Green Climate Fund (GCF).

More importantly, I saw a general sense of neglect among most parties to Asia-Pacific countries whose mere existence and territories are threatened by rising sea levels.

For the last 23 years, country leaders have been negotiating at the annual COP to come up with solutions to the global climate issue.

The reason being, if we increase our climate beyond 2C degrees, we will trigger an irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet and literally sink the Earth. Yet, after all this time, the end goal of a cleaner and more sustainable world is far in sight.

Various working groups such as the Umbrella Group, in which New Zealand is a member, have been formed to make dialogue between similar-thinking countries easier to hold and decisions easier to make. Similarly, various funds such as the GCF have been opened to help both the public and private sectors operationalise their adaptation initiatives.

However, it seems the further we go in the negotiations, the less ambitious member countries have become in mitigating climate change. This is particularly the case for Lima COP 2014, which resulted in a very weak agreement called the Lima Call for Climate Action.

Lima COP was supposed to straighten the creases and tackle the contentious issues in the negotiations so that when member states meet again in Paris this year they will be able to agree on, draft, and sign a new climate agreement.

We need this agreement to be strong and, as much as possible, be legally binding because the only logical solution to climate change is collective action.

We need to make sure all countries commit ambitious target emissions and implement these commitments; otherwise the 23 long years spent at COP would be a waste. And we need to make sacrifices now so that younger generations can have a liveable future.

Having seen and experienced the devastating effects of climate change when I directed a relief mission in Tacloban after the super typhoon Haiyan, I challenge governments to sufficiently reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that no one has to experience another extreme calamity. I challenge government to consult the public to determine what our international contribution should be. Finally, I challenge governments to completely eliminate dirty energy like coal and move towards renewable energy sources.

2015 is a crucial year for many reasons. This year representatives from 190 countries will convene in Paris to sign an unprecedented worldwide deal to tackle climate change. This is the year we are going to determine how committed leaders are in making wise decisions that will lead to a brighter future.

Have your say

Ahead of this year's United Nations Climate Change Convention in Paris, The Green Party are calling for people to have their say on what New Zealand's emission reduction target should be.

Check it out here.

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