From the Amazon rainforest to the desert, the 18-year-old indigenous woman Tainara Kambeba traveled four hours by boat and 2 and a half days including flights and stopovers to bring her experience and ideas about the environment from her home near Manaus (AM) to Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Likewise, many young people took up the spaces and were protagonists in the discussions at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, COP 27.

“I want the Amazon to rise again, as it was before, with the biggest forests”, said Tainara, who was born and raised in the Três Unidos indigenous community, where more than 35 families and more than 100 of the Kambeba people live, including children, young people and adults, also called omágua, which means “the people of the waters”. According to Tainara, in her community, the main means of subsistence is crafts made with sustainable materials, such as açaí. The young woman is an environmental activist and develops actions such as reforesting plant seedlings that are disappearing in the community, such as genipap.

“We can feel the climate effects in the community, because we can no longer identify so clearly what summer and winter are, because sometimes it rains a lot in summer and not so much in winter, and this makes it difficult to take care of our gardens”, she explains. “We have to act now and we are the future”, she adds.

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This was Tainara’s first international trip, the young lady who was one of three people selected by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the civil society organization Viração Educomunicação to represent Brazil at COP 27. The young representatives were selected based on the projects they presented and their own potential as information multipliers. The purpose of this trip is for them to make the most of the experience so that, when they return to their communities, they can take this knowledge with them and apply it in effective actions to preserve the environment.

For her, exchanging experiences is one of the greatest lessons she will carry with her when she returns home. “I participated in events where young indigenous people from different countries were present and, for me, it was a very enriching experience. Hearing reports from other places and knowing how much the degradation of the environment also affects them, for me, was great news and, for sure, I will reflect and share with the 'relatives' in my community", she reports.

Children and teenagers already feel the impacts of climate change

In a report released last week, in the midst of COP 27, Unicef ​​warned that climate change is already affecting childhood and youth on the planet. In Brazil, 40 million girls and boys are exposed to more than one climatic or environmental risk. The number is equivalent to 60% of young people in the country.

When extreme events happen, such as floods and heavy rains, in some communities children and adolescents have their school classes canceled and they even lose their homes. In situations of intense heat, young people also feel the impacts on their educational development, since, in the Amazon, many public schools do not have air conditioning and this impairs students' reasoning, concentration and well-being.

Air pollution, which is directly associated with climate change in Brazil, is aggravated by forest fires and the burning of fossil fuels in urban areas, and young people feel this most clearly: approximately two out of five Brazilians are exposed to concentrations of PM2.5 (outdoor air pollution) above the limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). In the case of children and adolescents, this number increases to three out of five.

On the outskirts, young people feel climate change more intensely

The report also shows that the effects of the climate crisis disproportionately affect children and adolescents who already live in a situation of greater vulnerability and are deprived of other rights, mainly black people, indigenous people, quilombolas, and those belonging to other traditional communities. “At Jurunas neighborhood (outskirts of Belém, Pará), we didn’t choose to talk about climate change. This topic came up unconsciously because we discovered that there were rivers around which turned into sewers and that made us reflect on the role of rivers, for example”, mentions Jean Ferreira, 28 years old, who was at COP 27 representing three organizations: the Gueto Hub (focused on the democratization of accesses on the outskirts of the capital of Pará), Perifa Connection (national communication collective) and Palmares Lab Action (focused on the diversity of actions against climate change).

“This is my first time at the COP and I got here as a result of mobilization. People from other networks and from my own community have helped me to get here, either with funding or by helping me with my accreditation. They did this because they believe it is important to have representatives from the outskirts in these spaces”, he says. Upon returning to Belém, Jean hopes to multiply his experience by organizing an event to discuss the topics addressed at COP 27, thus involving his community in the discussions.

From the outskirts of Amazonas to the representation of Latin America

Vitória Pinheiro, 26, is a young trans woman who grew up on the outskirts of Zumbi de Palmares, in Manaus (AM). “In most of the houses in ‘Zumbi’, still nowadays, – including in my family’s house – at least once a week, electricity goes off and many families do not have the ownership documents of their properties”, she reports, portraying the vulnerability of the local scenario. “But we don't want to be seen as victims, we want to develop solutions to the problems that affect us”, she adds. 

Now, Vitória is a climate activist, director of Palmares Lab Action (where Jean is also a member). Palmares Lab Action is the focal point for Latin America in the Official Children and Youth Constituency (YOUNGO) of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a stem from the UN that organizes the climate conference. According to her, the focus in this edition, held until November 18, was to achieve partnerships to increase the reach of the organizations these young people belong to.

“We want to take the demands of the youth to the government and also to financing agencies, people who can invest resources so that climate justice becomes effective and we are be able to act and capitalize our actions in our territories”, she informs.

Young people turn in a letter to governors of the Amazon

In the UNICEF report, it is crystal clear that most public policies and national plans related to climate and the environment scarcely mention, or completely ignore, the specific vulnerabilities of children and adolescents. As such, it is necessary to "guarantee funding and resources for the implementation of climate policies and projects sensitive to the rights of children, adolescents and young people", informs the document.

A group of young people from the Amazon also turned in a letter to the Legal Amazon Interstate Consortium requesting a youth council so that the group's perspectives are included in the initiatives of the states, showing an effective concern towards the importance of political participation in the region. The document was received and signed by Helder Barbalho, governor of Pará, on behalf of the Consortium, on November 15.

Hannah Baliero, 27 years old, from Amapá state, was one of the individuals who wrote the letter and participated in COP 27. “My expectation is that we manage to have a relationship in civil society networks with subnational governments so that we can go on together. This is what the COP is about, making partnerships”, she evaluates.

She is a member of the Mapinguari Institute, a non-governmental organization (NGO) of young people from the Amazon that puts the environment in the agenda, especially the protected areas in the region. “We, in the Amazon, have a close relationship with forests and rivers. And, in this region, people are also very economically vulnerable to climate change, because if there is an increase in rains in a period it is not expected, if there is a drought that lasts much longer than it should, you lose your crop, and this directly impacts producers and the population's feeding”, she analyzes.

In addition to these effects on the population's food systems, climate changes are linked to basic sanitation, water supply and rainfall period. This is stated by Mariana Guimarães, 27, from Pará, who was also in the group that wrote the letter to the Consortium. She went to COP 27 representing Mandii NGO, which has a socio-environmental education proposal focused on the connection among water, people and cities. “We have experienced climate changes in our region. For example, a few years ago there was a hailstorm event in Belém (capital of Pará), which is something totally unexpected, unusual. We notice changes in rainfall period every year”, she shares. “My dream is that (we, from the Amazon) can be seen and heard and that we can have autonomy over our territory, that we have a healthier and fairer environment, especially for traditional peoples”, she concludes.

Youth had its own pavilion for the first time

COP, promoted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), annually brings together representatives from several countries to seek solutions and sign agreements to overcome environmental problems. And youth already plays, historically, an important role in this scenario. But, this year, young people were highlighted with unprecedented opportunities: pavilion of their own, an even bigger one than the pavilions of many national delegations at the event. Every day and all day long during the event of COP 27, young people from all over the world had gathered at the stand to exchange experiences. The space was one of the busiest ones at the conference. It was eye-catching and lively, displaying colorful, modern decorations to be appealing to this audience. Despite the casual look, young people gathered to debate serious issues, such as the relationship between regenerative agriculture, climate justice and the impact of floods on different global realities. Simultaneously, the pavilion was the setting for artistic interventions, such as paintings on the walls made by the participants to express their points of view on the theme.

The pavilion received special attention from the General Secretary of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, who made an impacting pronouncement, saying that his “greatest hope is in young people”. “You are leading the fight against climate changes everywhere, in your homes, in your schools, on social media, on the streets. I count on your determination. Do not give up. I will never give up,” he declared.