Members of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition together at COP27
Ahead of COP28, The Elders are calling on leaders to collaborate to ensure the Loss and Damage Fund is operationalised so that funding can start to flow to the communities who need it. Here, members of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition explain why this action is so urgently required.
Brenda Mwale
It's high time governments reflect on their respective countries' situation and see if that's the kind of future they want to leave for their children, the kind of footprints they want to leave on earth and whether they want to be known for inaction and putting billions of lives at risk of loss and damage from the impacts of climate change.
Brenda Mwale
Birahim Papa Niang
I think governments should put in place networking fund programmes which talk about Entrepreneurship Policy. This would encourage youth and women impacted by climate change to tackle economic and non-economic losses and damage.
Birahim Papa Niang
Boniface Ojas
Loss and Damage is a lived reality in most countries. Concrete plans to address it need to be developed by the governments of different countries in the road to COP28, putting in mind the local context of their lived reality.
Boniface Ojas
Rahmina Paulette
The climate crisis is a collapse to humanity that needs to be rectified before it's too late. Our whole planet can be saved through actions not words.
Ineza Umuhoza Grace
Africa is only responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, but we are the continent that is much more vulnerable. I hope in the run up to COP28 there is a way to trust developing countries to lead on how the loss and damage fund should be operationalised and established, because they are the ones living this issue on a daily basis.
Brenda, Birahim, Boniface, Rahmina and Ineza are part of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition, a coalition of youth from the global North and South who have come together to demand action on addressing the loss and damage caused by climate change.
Views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Elders or The Elders Foundation
