Government legislation and UN agreements aren’t working! Humanity is headed over a cliff. We have to hit the brakes – reduce consumption, stop Climate Change and drive the Green New Deal to Zero Carbon Sustainability!
But HOW? - Civil Disobedience? Green Taxes? Schools Strike 4 Climate? Citizen’s Assemblies?
WHAT?
This workshop brainstormed with experts, young and old, what Actions will succeed in turning the Climate Emergency around. Our time is NOW! This is the most consequential decade humanity has ever lived through – the decade in which we get to choose our path. Towards Life. Or towards Death.
ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY
ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY TEAM
MANAGER: David Woollcombe
David led Peace Child International for 35 years as CEO, directing over 60 major productions and projects around the world. As President, and now as Chairman of the Board, he is intent to use his global contacts to ensure that the organisation moves to a new generation of leadership, equally committed to the central role that young people can play in our world.
PANELLIST: Mark Lynas
Mark is a British author, journalist and environmental activist who focuses on climate change. He is a contributor to New Statesman, The Ecologist, Granta and Geographical magazines, and The Guardian and The Observer newspapers in the UK; he also worked on the film The Age of Stupid. He has published several books including Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2007) and The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans (2011). He has stated "I think there is a 50–50 chance we can avoid a devastating rise in global temperature."
PANELLIST: Jonathon Porritt
I was born in 1950. The next couple of decades flowed by effortlessly at Eton, Magdalen College, Oxford, and messing around planting trees and farming in New Zealand and Australia. For ten years, I was a teacher in a West London comprehensive, then left to become Director of Friends of the Earth. In 1996, I set up Forum for the Future, which remains my ‘home base’. I was Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission between 2000 and 2009. I got married to Sarah in 1986, and we have two daughters Eleanor and Rebecca. At the moment, I’m especially busy promoting my new book, Hope in Hell – my ninth. That’s about it! Still hard at it nearly 50 years on.
PANELLIST: Karen Frances Eng
Karen Frances Eng is a writer and editor, specializing in communicating complex ideas that drive scientists, artists and other individuals to innovate. From 2004 to 2014, she served as editor of UNEP's youth magazine, TUNZA. She‘s a contributing writer at TED and has published hundreds of feature articles and profiles of visionaries from around the globe, across a vast swath of disciplines. She is also a tech-based artist and creative producer, currently exploring the worlds of cryptoart and VR art. She is a founding member of: Sprygg.io: a platform convening artists, technologists & communities to catalyse acts of genius; 105collective: a collective of UK-based artists bringing work to the digital, VR, & crypto spaces; and 11th Hour: an experimental festival of light and sound.
PANELLIST: Bart Ullstein
For the past 35 plus years, Bart has specialised in working with international organisations concerned with the environment and sustainable development including UNEP, FAO, WMO, WWF, WCMC and the EEA. Over the years, Bart has produced UNEP’s flagship magazine Our Planet and launched it as the first UN’s online magazine; devised and produced Tunza, UNEP’s youth magazine - building a readership of more than 1 million; edited UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook; edited UNEP/WMO’s Global Assessment of Short-lived Climate Forcers; devised, produced and launched WWF’s Living Planet Index; edited two volumes of the EEA’s Late Lessons from Early warnings; and devised and launched the FAO’s State of the World’s Food Insecurity Reports.
PANELLIST: Lauren Banham
Lauren is currently studying for A levels in Economics, Drama, Government and Politics at St George’s School, Harpenden where she is also an experienced public speaker and prize-winning drama student. She has volunteered for charitable work in the UK and at the “Jenga” project in Uganda. Lauren leads this Youth Panel because she leads on the idea of a Digital Citizen’s UN within Peace Child Intl. She raised it first with Richard Jolly at the Harpenden UNA’s UN75 meeting in January then fleshed it out at the Annual Meeting of the Academic Council of the United Nations in June. As the UN Secretary-General himself amongst many others – including UNA-UK’s Together First Campaign – are working to arrange greater citizen engagement in the work of the UN in its next 75 years, Lauren looks forward to presenting the UN S-G with the outcomes of our UN75 Festival when he comes to London in January 2021. He will be in the UK to mark the 75th Anniversary of the opening of the first UN GA at London’s Central Methodist Hall where the first UN General Assembly was held.
PANELLIST: Abigail Wordsworth
Abigail Wordsworth is a 17-year old student preparing for A-levels in French, English and Geography with a view to starting a Geography degree next year. She believes that geographers are key to a sustainable and ethical way of life. During lockdown, she has expanded her action in ethical fashion. Through the I have a Voice programme, she has been inspired to write to her MP and collaborated with 6th formers across the country to found the News to Reuse social media platform – which informs and inspires young people to resist the lure of fast fashion and develop ethical clothing solutions.
PANELLIST: Ella Faye
Ella Faye is an Actor and climate activist with Extinction Rebellion. She is a performance artist and advocates for the use of protest with political theatre and art to create the shift we need for the survival of our planet.
PANELLIST: Rosa Lynas
Rosa is thirteen years old, a youth climate activist, public speaker and award-winning writer. She organised a strike from school and has been involved in many protests since. She believes that we need a new world - a world in which the next generations can survive.
PANELLIST: Flora Griffiths
Flora studied International Relations and French at Sussex and in Strasbourg for a year. She has interned for Advocates for International Development and as an intern in fundraising for Peace Child International. She has also been to Kenya with Earthwatch.
Rapporteur: Estelle Marsh
Estelle is a second year undergraduate student studying International Development with the Environment at the University of East Anglia. With a passion for youth empowerment, peace and the environment, she is also a Peace Child International intern who has great hope in humanities ability to solve the environmental crisis we currently face and the role intergenerational will have in it.