Background

The Mediterranean is one of the most affected regions by climate change. Building territorial resilience has become essential to adapt to stresses and shocks, whether the stresses are climatic, socio-economic, or pandemic related. One of the key elements of territorial resilience pathways includes youth empowerment. Empowerment will enable youth to make informed choices to manage risks and develop an ability to participate in decision-making.

With that goal in mind, the CMI organized on June 18, 2020 a webinar on “Achieving territorial resilience by youth empowerment"  to share best practices between international experts and young Mediterranean professionals. As a follow up to this webinar, the CMI wishes to organize an online event to launch the Mediterranean Youth for Climate Action – MedYCA community of practitioners.

Objectives

Organized in partnership with the IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature), the online event’s main objective is to launch and engage a community of young practitioners on territorial resilience to climate change: the Mediterranean Youth for Climate Action network or MedYCA.

During the event, the youth will be invited to participate in a team building game: with the support of Cli’Mates team, an international youth-led think-and-do tank on climate change, they will put themselves in the shoes of key players in international climate negotiations. This game will spur the engagement of a group of youth in climate action and initiate their mobilization within the MEDYCA network.

Next Steps

This online workshop will be followed by a series of three online workshops in October, November and December whose main objectives are to engage youth in (i) producing innovative research and knowledge on resilience to climate change and (ii) preparing a set of policy recommendations to be presented at the 2020 Global Youth Forum and the 2021 IUCN World Conservation Congress.

Resources

• Agenda
• Presentation