“The issues that politicians and negotiators are dealing with are about our future. and if they are making decisions about us, then not without us”
The experience in CBD COP 10-Nagoya, for me, was worthwhile moment of a lifetime. This was the time where world youth can speak on behalf of their generation to come, urging the world governments to save the nature and protect the species. That was also an amazing occurrence where I delivered 3 minutes Biodiversity speech in “Stakeholders panelist session” -High Level Segment (HLS), in front of 192 government delegations and varied observers.
That was October 28th. There held the official panelist session in COP 10 that involved 8 diverse stakeholders (Parliamentarians [UK], Local govt., Business, Donor, NGOs, Indigenous, Woman, and Youth) to discuss their stances on the pivotal area of biodiversity issue. This is a vast opportunity for youth to speak up and have their idea about their future are being heard by government and all stakeholders. Together along with other youths attending, we tried to lobby our governments to demand highly strong commitment and political will to save the biodiversity loss by 2020. We speak up in forum on behalf of the world youth to let them know that many youth all over the world have capabilities to make a change and save the nature on our own way. Henceforth, as it talks about our future, we demand our involvement in the CBD process for the upcoming time.
So there it goes… My 3 minutes speech sufficiently depicted the current urgency of preserving nature and how important youth should be acknowledged to engage in the negotiation process.
http://webcast.cop10.go.jp/player.asp?id=2803&type=ondemand (skip to minute 36)
CBD COP 10 in Japan mainly aims to three aspect of biodiversity: Conserve biodiversity, use natural resources sustainably, and share Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanism. After all complexities of multilateral negotiation from 18-28 Octobers, We should be thankful that delegates of the conference agreed to committed legally binding achiaevemets namely Aichi Target and Nagoya Protocol. For this, Japan has already promised US$2 billion to help achieve the Nagoya targets, with smaller sums pledged by other CBD signatories, including France, Norway and the European Union
This brief story of my experience had shown how complex the international negotiations were that it required engaging all stakeholders in every single aspect of life. When talking about the issue of biodiversity and natural resources, it means talking about our future. Throughout the GYBO (Global Youth Biodiversity Organisasion) that had been newly established, the youth succeeded to lobby and convince CBD secretariat to recognize our engagement in the upcoming process of CBD negotiations. Why? Because youth is outsider that can intervene the negotiation with our direct channel regardless political and economical will. We have to participatively take part in decision-making upon our own future.
(With minister of environment Indonesia)
Is that all?
On October 27th, we six had presentation on the outcomes of IYCB 2010 in ministry interactive Biodiversity Forum. There comes many participant esp. from the local students. In this occasion, I presented to audience the initiation on creating the global youth organisation named GYBO to talk and take action related to biodiversity matters among youth all over the world.
This opportunity was a very great experience. At the end of the journey, we were also hosted by a Japanese family for 2 days and a night. This was indeed a pathway to enjoy the time with mesmerizing views, culture and people of Japan.
How do I get there?
This story begun In 2009, when I firstly joined Asian level conference on Biodiversity. My participation in AYCB is due to the selected essay and biodiversity project submission via online platform. Afterwhile, I was selected again to represent AYCB participant to the international level (IYCB) 2010 that was attended by youth from 70 countries with economic, environmental, international relations and diverse background of study or work. Around 3 weeks later, I received an official invitation from the ministry of Japan to represent IYCB participant together along with 5 other fellows from each continent (Egypt, United Kingdom, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia and Germany). Finally, in a discussion I was again chosen to represent world youth to deliver speech about youth and biodiversity (here: script). It’s an honor for us to represent the youth to be the official observer of HLS in CBD COP 10. We know, learn, share one another! Saving biodiversity is saving our future life.
