Latin American youth gather in Paris COY11

Many young people reunited on second day of COY11 (Conference of Youth against climate change) in Paris to discuss and make proposals inside this enormous event, which seeks to integrate a new vision supported in the different realities and common needs of our countries, as well as, to share expectations about COP21 (Conference of Parts of United Nations against climate change).

_

Young from Costa Rica, Perú, Ecuador, Brasil, México and Colombia went to the meeting, who will also participate in COP21. The meeting is known as one of the most important conferences in the last years because it looks for a new and more ambitious climate change agreement.

During the discussion it was decided to make two groups: one of them focused on talking about projects and youth organizations and the second one focused on discussing about some proposes to work before the COP21, in the conference, and after it.

They payed special atention to the COY11 manifest that shows young people as an important part of negociations. Palmira Cuéllar from México, who was in the first group, told us that every person there shared about their own work in their country and organization.

They had many similar interests and projects that could be applied in other cities, but more important, they saw that they must move from ideas to joint projects. Iago Hairon from Brasil, participant of the second group, indicated that the objetive was to visualize Latinoamerica’s thought is a little different from global north in a young look.
In there each one of the attenders were linked to a work group focus on different topics like: humans rights, education, health, communication and intergenerational equity.

This work will be a sustention for the manifest that COY11 will take to COP21 where they will have many meetings to be heard.

On the other hand, something to highlight is that bouth group thought that young people from Latin America is less represented on this events and they saw that youth work in climate change is not only reduced to participate in this conferences but it is important local work.

Also they expressed that work of young latinoamericans do not have to be only bounded to every year COY but also it must be a regular work because we share common goals.