In Latin America and the Caribbean there are also teenagers who are mobilized to take action against climate change and in favor of the planet. And there are others who, while continuing to urge governments to make the essential regulations to reduce the impact of pollution and reach the goal of zero emissions, also take action in their communities, by themselves. So far, 6,345 teenagers have already taken 400 actions in 14 countries in the region.
They respond to the “1000 Actions for a Change” campaign, which began last October, sponsored by Concausa 2030, a platform created by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), UNICEF and the organization América Solidaria. In the campaign, adolescents from all over the continent are called upon to propose concrete actions to reverse climate change and global warming in their communities, in their immediate surroundings. They have the opportunity to do so until March 6, 2020.
This weekend, several of these young people presented the campaign at COP25 in Madrid, as reported by Belén Hernández for El País.
“Adolescents are not only the most vulnerable victims of climate change, but also the future citizens who will make the decisions,” Hernández quoted Catalina Silva, an 18-year-old Chilean ambassador from Concausa.
The platform Concausa 2030 was born in March 2019 to summon, promote and disseminate social innovation proposals coming from young people and adolescents, which must be aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030. Several of the 17 UN goals include the health of the planet.
The campaign “1000 actions for change” was born thanks to the ideas of three young people in the group, according to an official video informs on Twitter. These three people saw “the need to motivate more young people and adolescents to start taking action”.
On the campaign website there are 19 main proposals for action. In the English version of the platform they display 15: Monday Without Meet; Environmental Guard; Community Garden; No More Plastics; Item Swap; Community Transport; How are We Using Energy?; Recyclepalooza; Clean Energy; Ecosystem Restoration; Report; Environmental Education Workshops; Save the Amazon; Cigarpalooza, Eco-bricks.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5THh6Kn61l/
They then invite teenagers to upload a concrete action they have done within these categories in a form that only adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 should complete and upload. They also ask them to photograph their actions and post the images on the web.
They call on the entire region, including the Caribbean, affected every year and often by hurricanes and internal displacement because of them.
The 400 actions carried out so far come from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.
These are some examples:
➢ Recyclepalooza. Amán Quesada Herrera, 16 years old, Capula, Mexico: “Together with my brother Marcelino, who is 11 years old, we collected paper from the community so that we could recycle it and with that money buy trees for reforestation.”
➢ No more plastics. Sebastián Bautista Requejo, 16, Veracruz, Mexico (25 teenagers): “I create awareness in the community about single-use plastic contamination and its toxic effects. I created the Veracruz 3R Challenge and promote the use of reusable bags directly in schools, supermarkets, packing houses, businessmen, chambers of commerce, Social Security, etc. To date I have managed to reduce the use of more than 210,000 single-use plastic bags.”
➢ Clean Energy. Melody Juárez, 16 years old, San Andrés Itzapa Chimaltenango, Guatemala (nine teenagers): “Using a bike-blender we can realize that we should not always be dependent on electric energy, but that we can create an alternative energy based on human propulsion and at the same time help not to pollute our environment any more.”
➢ Environmental Education Workshops. Elianu Barralaga, 18, Jutiapa, Honduras (14 teenagers): “In a small meeting of boys and girls from the Catholic Church of my community, they asked me to give a talk about a topic and I decided to give it environmental education.
➢ Environmental Guard. Ana María Amaya, 18, Santa Ana and Isla Tasajera, El Salvador: “In Santa Ana, together with the NGO Un Pulmón Más, we cleaned up the historic center of my hometown. Since then, it looks much cleaner. On Tasajera Island, together with Un Pulmón Más and 4Ocean, we cleaned and collected plastic, sandals, cloth and other waste that would otherwise end up in the sea.”
➢ Plantatón (planting trees). Alexis Suárez Miranda, 18, Montes de Oro, Costa Rica (20 teenagers): “An environmental group from the canton called for a day of reforestation, in which a great diversity of trees were planted near water springs.”
➢ Garbage Out. Diana Merlo, 13, Los Llanos, Venezuela (168 adolescents: “My brother, some friends and I are in the process of testing an initiative to make schools more eco-friendly. In general, what we want to achieve is that schools use biodigesters to treat organic waste from the same school and use the biogas generated for the school kitchen. This would reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases and the use of fossil fuels (…) What we have been doing over the past few months is determining whether everything was worthwhile. We carried out a social study in our school community, in which we carried out a campaign to recycle organic garbage and set up specific garbage bins to collect it. That was to determine if the community was able to collaborate. The data collection and research phase was a success and (as I mentioned earlier) we are looking forward to moving forward.”
➢ Community Garden. Nicole Puente, Carolina Chinchilla and Laura de Campos, 17, Bogotá, Colombia (six teenagers): “Vegetables and plants were grown for consumption by the school community. Comparison of coffee (coffea) fertilizer fingers for lettuce (lactuca sativa). Cultivation of grafted roses (misterlincoln). Hanging and portable mini orchard containing crespa lettuce (lactuca sativa). Solid bioinsecticide from dehuevo decasks and a garlic-based liquid as a solution against tomato (solanum lycopersicum) and lettuce (lactuca sativa) pests. Method of germinations without seed in the micro orchard for the cultivation of vegetables, fruit and grass for the cafeteria.”
➢ Cigarpalooza. Pamela Mishell Rosales, 16, Comuna Shinchal, Ecuador (10 teenagers): “I left the school and came home to leave my suitcase and made the cigarpalooza. I told a group of boys to help me, that I was picking them up at school and together we went to collect. We filled about 3 bottles of cigarettes.”
➢ Environmental Education Workshops. Luciana Cecilia Navarro, 16 years old, Trinidad, Bolivia (23 teenagers): “These last few days I challenged many people to do actions, I participated in several of them and many even asked me what would be useful to do something, they even told me that climate change was a fallacy, so I took the reins and prepared this workshop to teach that change is really possible, and I believe that for the next action that will take place on Saturday I will be able to count on more people.”
➢ Environmental Guard. Emilia Isabel Torres, 18, Cañete, Chile: “Together with my mother, I cleaned a beach considered one of the cleanest in the province of Arauco, in the city of Lebu, but within seconds we realized the amount of plastic, plumavit, cigars, fishing rods and many microplastics that were in it. We gathered around, in the bushes of the coast and on the shore of the sea.”
➢ Community Transport. Santiago, 18, Santa Rosa La Pampa, Argentina (five teenagers): “With a group of friends we decided not to use cars for a week.”
➢ Cigarpalooza. Arantxa Carvallar, 18, Hernandarias, Paraguay (eight teenagers): “We gathered with some friends to clean up around Lake Las Américas – Area 6 of the city of Hernandarias.”
➢ Garbage Out. Clara Saralegui, 12, Guichón, Paysandú, Uruguay (10 teenagers): “We went through almost all the streets of Guichón collecting garbage and our purpose would be to inform people about the subject so they don’t throw a piece of paper again.”