Food systems transformation is the key in addressing climate change. But currently, youth's commitment and voice in this arena are often overlooked or set aside.
In China, the Good Food Fund has been actively engaging the Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development (ICCSD) at Tsinghua University (chaired by Xie Zhenhua, China’s Special Envoy on Climate Change) through initiatives at different levels which aims at bringing food issues to their agenda.
In 2019, ICCSD convened the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate (GAUC), which focuses on joint research, green campus, student activities and public engagement, and so on. We see more opportunities to demand actions from the decision makers by global youth campaigns.
The annual youth summit of GAUC to be held in late October, is promoting the COP 26 Youth Voices Project. A short film compiled of submitted youth voices will be showcased to the climate negotiators, policymakers, academics, and the public during COP26.
ICCSD kindly asked the Good Food Fund to help promote the Youth Voices Project, collect youth voices videos on food & climate action and directly present the videos to the leadership of ICCSD - they are ready to hear from us!
The leadership of ICCSD is those policymakers of China's carbon neutrality strategy. We believe that it is promising to influence them to focus more on food systems, as long as we can showcase the volume and magnitude of youth voices and desire in food systems transformation. The more videos on food action we have, the better. Our engagement at this stage is critical, if we all envision a future where the policy makers of China's carbon neutrality strategy focus more on food systems, especially changing diets.
Dear fellow advocates,
We sincerely invite you to film a 2-min video and send it to us (unfss@goodfoodchina.net), ideally by 31 of Aug. Please also help promote the campaign to have more people do the same!
As the influence of GAUC continues to take shape across the world, our engagement at the global level will ensure that food-related topics get the much-needed attention.
We would love to invite you to share your ideas on how we can achieve this goal (just for an example, build a global youth network to co-organize events with GAUC) in your 2-min video. We very much look forward to collaborating with you to make the campaign more globalized in the long term.
Please feel free to reach out to unfss@goodfoodchina.net
Youth team at the Good Food Fund / UNFSS-AT2 China Action Hub
1. Your first name, and country (5 seconds)
2. Why is climate change important to you? (25 seconds) (Food-centric perspective)
You can talk about your personal experience, the impact you have suffered deep in your community, especially in terms of food（e.g. food insecurity...）
3. What is the most important change you think we need to make to address climate change? (25 seconds)
You can start with two sentences that emphasize the importance of food systems in climate action. We strongly suggest that all of our videos address the fact that "Food systems are responsible for one third of global greenhouse gas emissions"
Followed by concrete actions and impacts, such as dietary shift, reducing food waste, regenerative agriculture, etc.
4. Are you involved in a climate group or organisation? If so, what does it do/ what are you working on? (15 seconds). If you are not, please leave out this question.
5. What pledge will YOU take to address climate change (25 seconds)
The ones related to climate change from the Good Food Pledge and Actions for Change are listed for you to pick. Please note that you don’t necessarily have to pick from these.
6. What would you most like to say to the global decision-makers at COP? (25 seconds)
e.g. follow up the actions (eg. healthy and sustainable diets) identified by UN Food Systems Summit at COP;
provide climate-friendly, plant-rich foods at COP...
You can also call on GAUC leaders to pay more attention to food, and share your idea on how we as youth can help achieve it!
