 So as we are all here, we are in this session called how overcoming barrier youth participation in delivering adaptation. So the objective of this session is to understand, first of all, it's to share good of practice, experience and listen learn from the youth across the group who are present. And also the event will focus on promoting cooperative action to overcome the barriers of youth engagement on adaptation, whether in project design, policy-making, even awareness on the community level. And so we will identify the action and opportunities to strengthen enabling environments and enhance the provision of supporting adaptation in the context of specific policies, practices and local action at local level. So basically what we'll be doing is we will create a safe room for everyone to understand how the youth can, what the youth are doing right now and what the youth are willing to contribute towards too, to change the system as they're working right now and to empower our work in community-based adaptation projects. I would like to go forward for this month and provide us the next agenda. Thank you. Thank you very much, Grace. So basically, at this point, we want to take a very short time to know who is in the room. We would like to, by way of geographical location where the person is coming from age range and profession just to understand, to have a basic understanding of who is in the room and where are they coming from or representing. With this, I think Alex would help me to roll out the poll. Yeah, so I hope you can all see this on your screen. So you just go ahead and then let's follow it as we go on. Okay, looks like I have everyone responding to this. And very amazing results. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Let's move on quickly. And I would have, I would now have two amazing gentlemen who are quite experienced, mid-career level as far as youth matters are concerned. So I would have first Joshua Amponsen, director for Green Africa Youth Organization, to speak on the underlying challenges and barriers for youth engagement and following that would also be Yifan Oula. So Joshua, let's start with you. Hello, everyone. Very happy that we have 33 people in this session. So thanks to everyone who made it. The session will look at barriers that young people face when they seek to engage in climate adaptation and look at the poll results. I'm very, very excited that we have a sort of majority being in civil society and private sector. And also then on the other side, having students also here. We're gonna look at, I think, issues that particularly folks on the call who are coming from civil society, policymaking and the private sector would agree to. At the same time, students and young people also agree to that these are challenges they face. So a bit of a background to what I'll be sharing as barriers. In 2019, I co-led a research for the Global Commission on Adaptation. And the research was to identify what role young people can play in adaptation. And also secondly, to identify where the gaps are and how stakeholders could fill that gap. So as part of the research, we held consultations with in 10 countries with young people and youth organizations. And sort of had an online Soviet as well talking to different youth groups of which some are also present on the call. So very happy to see people who have been part of this work on the call as well. So gathering all these data and all this information and developed what we call adapt for our future, which was a report to say that institutions and current stakeholders need to increase adaptation efforts to protect our future as young people. Part of that was also to really put young people in the center of adaptation. And to put young people in the center of adaptation will mean that we need to identify what prevents them or what prevents children and youth from taking path actively in adaptation. And some of the barriers that we came across through this research, and I'm gonna share my screen quickly and take you through this very simple one page, one page that I have here. So one of the challenges that when we think about youth and climate adaptation, particularly in the context of locally led action, is education, education challenges to assess education or training on programs and activities that are done at the governance level within local communities, also assess to education in the context of understanding the conceptual framing of adaptation and even more particularly community based adaptation. So this already presents a barrier for young people when they think of getting engaged on adaptation. For on the side of policy makers, I mean, it's been very common that engaging with stakeholders, you hear a common phrase that, oh, they don't understand the details of it when we engage with young people, they don't understand the complexity. These phrases are coming from the side that young people do not have access to all the training that is needed to be able to support institutions more family. And hence, most of the advocacy or the quest and the push to engage on community based adaptation or adaptation in a more general sense than has its own limitations, which doesn't make it very, very attractive for some stakeholders to engage. The second part, which is a very significant barrier, even when young people have access to education and access to training and could actively very support very much. The challenge is that institutions are not set up in a way that they have a specific mandate or focus to open up the aspects to receive young people and the aspiration and ideas and proposals. So in a very local context, at the local governance level, you realize that most young people who are engaged in these projects are working with civil society groups or even most often INGOs and not their own city, city mayors or municipalities or districts at this level. And this is because at that level, most across the world, the most communities do not have the structure that you have a structure and an office that focuses on getting the input of young people in or integrating young people into the work itself. In best case scenarios, you will have a youth council or some once in a while youth engagement, which could be in the form of a town hall meeting or could be in the form of having a survey or a dialogue with young people. And this happens once in a while and every conversation is integrated in this town hall meeting which doesn't really allow for what the youth and children aspire when it comes to adaptation. It doesn't make it really, really ideal. But I would like to talk about its lack of credibility. And I think a lot of people really agree to this. That young people struggle to have credibility because they're one of all, first of all, they are not seen as experts. Secondly, because of the traditional settings of most communities and cultures does not really put emphasis on the work of young people and rather looking at whatever degree they are holding or whatever expertise they might have in terms of proving expertise or years of experience or all these traditional systems and structures we have in place which really then makes it difficult why an organization or a city governance structure should invite a group of young people to sit and talk about the next ecosystem-based strategy or the next strategy towards floods or droughts within a community. And this makes it difficult. And the last part is finance which is obviously for the whole adaptation space and for community-based adaptation as a whole. Finance is still a struggle. How do we get finance to reach local communities? And this is a session that will be done, I believe tomorrow or Thursday or Friday there will be a session on innovative financing for local aid action. And this is very important because I think that for young people engaged in adaptation discourse at the local level and even in the implementation phase as well. Usually money is a big challenge how to profile the work they do or the organization itself to reach a standard where they can receive money from the central government since most adaptation funds sits at a central governance level or have to be sourced from international organizations and sort of this lack of flexibility on funding makes it really, really difficult. Having said these barriers, I think it's very, very important to just take a few seconds to highlight some key things which came out of this research as well. Realizing that when it comes to community-led adaptation young people play a critical role in terms of the implementation. So when it comes to implementation from most of the interviews we had with stakeholders who are implementing on the ground like UNDP, SNBG, AZET and colleagues who are working in this field in the field of practice. Typically young people are the ones involved in the implementation process. Decision making is done with community leads which is done with other governance level but when it comes to actual implementation young people are the ones involved in this heavily. The second part is that young people are also using different means to sort of adapt at the community level and entrepreneurship is one of the most significant areas where young people are helping their communities to adapt by creating enterprise and social businesses using this approach which is really, really worth looking at especially in rural context. This is very significant and has to be given the right attention. And I think the last point I will make is that we are at a point where knowledge transfers not just moving knowledge from institutions with long health experience or even people with sort of who are old gray hair with a lot of experience but also now knowledge transfers also from young people to the older generation and this is very important given the technological development that happened over the last two decades. So this is something to note that these barriers have to be overcome if you want to tap into the advantage of engaging with young people and they are designed to drive in entrepreneurship, in community led action, in knowledge transfer and also in their rapidness to adopt new forms of governance and political expression which we see today. I will pause it here and pass it over to Ethan. Ethan, what do you think? Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Josh, for summarizing it very well and for mentioning the key point. I will just add some more point. For example, as a regional focal point of United Nations Medical for Children you somehow have been involved from last two, three and with young people especially the youth from Global South and I'm also writing my thesis and I having interviewed with a lot of these relevant stakeholders like different UN attendees, different government and different NGOs. So the point of it somehow coming in our conversation is about the youth and especially about the different movement which the youth have, if you talk about Friday for Future or Extension Rebellion. So actually the burning point from this relevant big player, we can say the stakeholder, they are telling us that it's nice that somehow youth are going on the street and demanding for climate justice and things like that. But when it's come to the real concrete solution when you ask them, do you people have some solution to give it to us? So this is the point where somehow the youth are not clear what actually they want to do and how they will do it which also makes their voices less effective in this world movement. So it also goes to the capacity and the knowledge of the young people that how much aware they are of this world climate change adaptation or disaster reduction arena. So one of the barrier which I think is crucial that should be considered that we need to build the capacity of the young people, not just to come on the street to voice their voices. It is good that they are coming on the street and demanding for and having demands for the future. But it's also really important to have some kind of solution that will also make the voices of the young people more effective and it will having more kind of appreciative behavior from those big players. So that was actually the first point and second point is about tokenism like these days we saw a lot of these organizations somehow they took you as a token in their conferences or in their trainings and somehow they are putting them on the front table giving them the opportunity to speak on the opening ceremony but after that ceremony or after that conference nothing concrete can come up. So I think it's also the main point where the organization should really take the voices of you serious and not that use them as a just a token but also to give them proper inclusion their own negotiation in planning processes. Just talk about bureaucracy. So I think it's also like this world structure how it's work somehow we see in a lot of ways for example especially when something in community level and for example our voices are few somehow if it travel from local level from bottom to top so it's like take a lot of time and somehow it disappear in this world structure of bureaucracy. So this also one of the main barrier where this government should also take it serious and somehow make things flexible for young people not make things complicated for them to somehow maybe to come up with with some a platform on also on the local national and national level or maybe in each country if they having like this youth focal point at national level where the youth can put their did money in front of them somehow this youth office can also work on the capacity building of the young people so I think it will be also one of the solution for this whole processes and the last thing which I will talk about is the financial barrier so usually it's I think so the big issue youth having these are despite it having some innovative ideas especially the youth are involved in the community level so if they want to approach for funding for support somehow those donor are demanding them to have a kind of structure you know like they should have a good history before doing a mini project but as a youth is a beginner it's not that much easy you know that you have your own team of five or six people and you have experience at the project before for five years for four or five years you know so usually the donor should also change their behavior especially if they want to to work with the young people so I think so these are some of the main barriers which young people have and which you should really need to work on it and the government should to be honest really take it serious because these day everyone is talking about youth but somehow no one listened to youth so I think it's time because the future belongs to us not to those old people we can say so they should really take our way serious and they should let us to plan for future and so yeah that will be I think some of the solution for the issue yeah thank you sorry I was muted thank you so much Joshua and Yifan these are rather very crucial points you have raised in terms of the barriers that that exist and for which reason we are not able to see the progress that we have to see in terms of youth involvement in adaptation and coming to base adaptation and fighting climate change in general at this point we would like to go into some three groups and the reason is that we would want to address three critical points for this discussion is for the purpose of streamlining the discussion from start to end and for these three groups we would have leads for group one we would have Elliot for group two we would have Inezza Grace and then for group three we would have Zaynab the polls are already rolled on and I believe that most of you have picked the groups you want to be in am I right Alex? I believe the participants should be renaming themselves now we'll post which groups they'll be on Yes quickly so I'm going to rename myself with the three questions I will ask to invite the moderators to have like one minute each to just talk about their breakout room so people on the call have an idea what the breakout room will be talking about to introduce their questions and also give room for participants to choose which room they want to go to so if you can please allow the moderators to quickly introduce their sessions that would be great. Okay thank you for the clarification Josh so we start with Elliot tell the participants what you would be discussing. Sure so by way of introduction my name is Elliot Conner I'm living here in Sydney at the moment I'm 17 years old so very much in the youth category what I'd love to discuss with those of you in my breakout room will be the intergenerational dialogues so I work with a charity I founded called Human Age Projects with volunteers working towards environmental courses across 105 countries which scaled over the past 12 months so very much into the networking across country barriers language barriers but also the generational divide so some really interesting discussions I hope can have and some learnings hopefully that you can take away as well. Thank you Elliot, Grace. Okay Hi again so for me the group number two we'll be discussing on how can we enhance the participation of youth in the UNFCC negotiation by by tackling the challenges of empty promises and the lesson learned on the ground because currently we are behind the achievement of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goal so we'll be discussing on how can we better structure our voice for the change. Thank you. Thank you Grace Zainab. Hello everyone in breakout group number three adaptation action and how youth can work to guide the process and we'll be focusing on the ideas and take adaptation action the context of the policy perspective and evidence-based information and then teaching the ideas to politicians and government agencies with different knowledge needs. Thank you. Thank you Zainab so as we have heard the three what we are supposed to do now also these three questions have been typed in the chat if you couldn't hear any of the speakers very well you can check the chat but what we are supposed to do now is to make our choices the first option is that you just go to participant you see your name you can name yourself one of the groups so for example okay I would do mine now but you just so my name is Desmond Alunua so I would just put for example group A I would put A and then continue with my name as it is already there and then you can do the same for yourself if that is very difficult for you to do don't worry you can just type your name and add the group number in the chat and then the note takers would track it and also add you to the appropriate group but for now it will be easier if you just add A for example in Eliot you see A Eliot you see B Joshua so let's try to do that now in one minute please bodies and the senior bodies and I believe that are well equipped to identify the first casualty here comes a role of the social scientists the political scientists to for the collaboration established the same visual link and to identify the target group behavior team up to provide the advice that is not only evidence but also the utilization focused so that we can better implement the agenda which we are proposing as well as to make the politicians ensure that whatever we are proposing is backed up by a proper evidence and it is going to make any difference in this regard I would like to identify that the gas and the right report of the data is very important because all around the world if we run a simple Google search we find that there is not that kind of transparency which is required to properly back up the adaptation actions all around the world be it global south be it global north so we need to have a proper scientific evidence which should not be dominated by any false positive or any false negative and there is a need to ensure the transparency while scientific findings are politically relevant in terms of climate research any other field I believe that scientists need to understand how policy differs from the research and evidence of the fact okay guys I hope you are able to hear me now clearly I believe I should go back to one or two points so maybe we can make it two way and anyone from the audience can share their views on the topic and maybe then I'll add a bit more oh alright so I basically was talking about the utilization of focused evaluation I believe that public administration is the main user of the scientific evidence for the policy making therefore the scientific advice we provide to the policy makers to go beyond providing a scientific evidence because I believe that by using the jargon we cannot make a layman understand what we are trying to communicate we cannot you know be very successful in conveying our plans and our to the policy making bodies when we talk about it in perspective of the politician so it should go beyond providing the scientific evidence and we also need to recognize that evidence alone is not enough for the policy makers to take appropriate mires it only passes the truth test but not the utility test and to become partially relevant it should be very practical and also we need to foster the collaborations with the scientific knowledge to address the first hand casualty but here we need to develop collaborations with a social scientist and a political scientist that can help us establish the target group behavior not only the evidence based but also the utilization focused. Then we need to identify the right data gaps and right reporting and to show that whatever we report there is an element of transparency. The scientific evidence should not be dominated by any false positive or any false negative because it may cause ambiguity in the policy making later on and it may cause somehow the negative impact in the communities. So the findings should politically relevant these policy makers also emphasize the scientist understanding of how policy differs from the research findings and their awareness of the fact that when we inform the policy makers we need to transform our role from the perspective of the policy makers also the need to commit to being transparent to disclose the research information to the participant and to make our publish and the findings completely transparent. I hope that I've covered what I've missed earlier because of the internet action problems. Okay so let's make it a two-way process. I would like to love to hear from anyone of their participants to their views on the gaps and how we can bridge the gap between the evidence based policy making and the adaptation actions. Anyone? Okay. So I think that I should have some more points since not most of our audience is okay. Yeah please, Kovya, go on. Go on. Yes. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me. Yeah, I can hear you. Okay, so I just have one quick thought on how we can bridge the gap between evidence based policy making and adaptation. I want to focus majorly at the local level. When you're looking at giving an example, for example at the local level, the communities have the role to play in ensuring that adaptation is effective. So if you want to bridge that gap, we should make the important and passive, for example, of the learning processes at the local level. Are they able to assess adaptation? Are they able to document the practices in their own well informative ways so that in the future if policy is being developed, if there is any issue in policy and we want information and evidence, it is the local people who are the target beneficiaries who present these evidences and I think it carries more weight other than bringing it right from the national levels or carrying evidence from the local, from the national levels. Yet we are not the target beneficiaries at the end of the day. So if the communities can be empowered to document their own practices, to give evidence of practices and adaptation to foster learning at the local level, then we can be able to bridge that gap between adaptation practices and policy on adaptation. Thank you. Thank you. I think that's a very good point because obviously we need to incorporate indigenous knowledge into the adaptation actions and without that I believe that we cannot provide. Thank you. I think from my side it's rather more a question than a good experience. I'm just thinking the relationships that are built in the moment when you are collecting the evidence and I think like Skobja said it's the community who has the understanding about the context and what's wrong in the context and how policies are maybe barriers for for problems research because of the researcher who based on the evidence gathered from the local community and the relationships that are involved in. Yeah. So you raise a very good question. Actually the translating the scientific evidence into a concrete policy recommendation is actually a very challenging task whereas the scientific evidence of the human made climate change is robust and clear in the scientific community and it has been proven very earlier by the IPCC and other bodies. So I believe that it is a difficult process but we need to slowly translate this knowledge into binding and effective policy interventions. We I recently got to know about an adaptation challenge by the UN under the technical examination process and adaptation. So I believe that such opportunity is where we can pitch our ideas and then tweak them in accordance with the local communities or by taking the studies. I believe that these are small opportunities where we can align our policy recommendations backed up by the scientific research. Let's take an example of research with XYZ person doing in a lab and then he or she finds a very potential results but these results sometimes go unreported and even if unreported there is no practical implementation. So I believe that here becomes the role of that collaboration which I was talking previously. We need to build that collaboration between the policy makers between the academia and between the researchers to work in collaboration with each other and then to help at least adapt and you know kind of make some parts incorporated into the policy making process or even if not the policy making process at least at the negotiation level at the government tables and the decision making process and also there is a need to take the youth to make them able to participate at the decision making table so there is a chance little chance for the youth to communicate their findings and to kind of share their views with the people who actually are responsible for implementing the right policies and for drafting the right policies. I hope that answers your question. Yes, hello, hello. Hi. Yes, I also want to add to what you mentioned in response to the question. I also think that fact that adaptation is usually need best okay and policies yes it's need best so and policies are also to address the needs of the people policies are formulated to address the needs that either actions or inactions blessing on the needs and desires of the people. So I think that alone creates a very big opportunity if there is such a at hand can be able to match the interests of policy makers of the interest of the communities then I think that becomes a very substantial second the research should be in position also bring evidence you should be able to be in position to create of your research that are friendly to the local people and that is where the challenge has been we create research and at the end of the day yes it will feed the policy makers but the local implementers the local people who are affected and not I do not have the capacity for example to interpret or to get the information to learn from the research that you've taken because at the end of the day you collect information from them but you don't give feedback to them in terms of your research findings in the simplest and most applicable formats and that is that has been a very big gap the policy makers up here think that the research has already bridged the gap between the policy makers and the people but when it comes to translation simplifying the research in order to bridge that gap we need to go that way that we feed as researchers as you we have the opportunity to feed the local people with research that has been developed so that we can bridge that gap between the local people and the policy making and that enables us to create strong evidence for adaptation and for policy making thank you I completely agree with you Skovia these are I think great comments from your side I completely agree okay so we have some points in the chat so let's go towards them if anyone has any comments we will take them after them so there is a question from Janet are there any good examples of successful collaborations Janet are you talking about the collaborations between the academia and the government then I'll provide you a context I'm from Pakistan by the way so I'll provide you the example from our country so recently the minister of my chain has been doing some projects related to implementation and also the billion trees and NAMI and some other projects so they actually are fostering the collaboration with university and academia and they are running some public campaigns which actually target the youth groups so I believe that this is a very good example and from especially coming from the developing country thank you that would be really helpful that's great okay so there is another question from Janet is there any advice for youth groups wanting to partner with researchers I believe that the researchers who are part of the youth groups can actually derive the change they can help people connect with the researchers and then they can kind of derive the policy recommendations into the process by presenting those policy recommendations or concrete evidences to the government level as a youth NGO or as a youth group this is what we are also doing as a part of the United Nations framework for youth constituency which is called as UNGO so that's a very good example Pukrani is saying that you need to be exposed with the policy that we will earlier our breakout from also got cut off because people had a lot to say so really really interesting to see this in the chat from you because I think the breakout from were really engaging and we were still talking about quite some really impressive and important issues when the time was up yeah really interesting discussion I'd also mentioned of course on Zoom you can private message someone so I know we did introductions in our room if there was someone who's work aligned with your own feel free to start a conversation here I think that's definitely what a conversation is like this all about good happy to have everyone back and at least I can speak to group A that we had pretty much very great discussing and I want to believe that it was the same across the other groups at this point first of all we would want to have some few minutes to share notes we want to have at least one person from each of the groups sharing what they discussed and so that the rest of us can have the privilege of hearing that and then if that doesn't take so much time we would have the opportunity to actually clarify some few things by way of questions and answers with respect to what already happened with respect to the groups and with respect to the earlier two presenters that we had I'm referring to Joshua and Yifan so I'd like to kind of make it a bit unconventional can we start with group C thank you Desmond so I'll turn off my video because internet was kind of bugging with it so we discuss about the gaps between the policy and political awareness and then we discuss about different knowledge needs due to the different needs of the politicians and the government agencies and the policy relevant science communication which needs to foster the collaborations between the academia, government, policy makers and other different stakeholders then we discuss about the role of the NGOs and early career researchers since there is a need to have an approach which is based on the utilization focused evaluation research and the effectiveness of the proposed policies which should not only concern which should not only kind of address the public problems but also the solutions and propose the consequences of the policy decisions also there were some great insights coming from the audience regarding the local level local level adaptation actions and collective evidence from the communities someone also mentioned the role of the knowledge collection based on the individual communities and also from the indigenous communities and there was also a great insights regarding the role of the research that should be relevant with respect to the practical implementation of the adaptation actions and the role to strengthen the collaboration between the young scholars and the practitioners there was a great focus on the utilization of focus evaluation basically because there is a need for the scientific evidence to go beyond providing the scientific evidence since there is no just alone for the policy makers to take appropriate measures therefore it should be politically relevant and advice needs to address the very practical concerns so that was some of the highlights from the breakout room number three thank you oh wow this is great you can see how much information we have been able to gather with such a small time thank you so much Grace and everyone in that group let's move to group B okay should I start yes please so yeah our discussion was so fruitful and we come up with a lot of points especially with some solution so actually we talk about the barrier which young people have a while participating and then UNFCCC negotiations so first of all during the discussion it came out that we really need a kind of a precise clear structure UNFCCC will see that how it's work and how it will import view to make for the other participant for the young people and will make it easy that how they will participate in this whole negotiation and planning processes you know so there should be a clear planning that everyone especially the interested youth who are interested to take and participate in this negotiation can have a clue that how to go and what to do and how to do and the second thing is also about the structure also from the government and not just from UNFCCC government also have to be a kind of special body like we can say a special focal point or maybe a youth focal point a platform where they also orient the youth about the different activities and how they approach it how they negotiate and how they put their voices on this big negotiation if you talk about COP and other this platform that how they can go there and how they can put their voices on the negotiation table and they can also come up with some support and there was also interesting inside Sherwood one of the participant shared a story that we saw that the same people are going to those conferences anywhere so there's no new faces so the same people go there having the same discussion so I think that we will also go to orient this process and at the same delegate at the same young people go to every training but there should be like people from different background and it's also the responsibility of those people who already participated from a country to orient and also to other youth that how this whole process work and how they can get engaged so maybe over to Joshua and Eza if they want to add more if I skip some point just quickly to add that also for young people to and people outside the government space to also understand that the COP is meant for the parties which are basically the countries and they have the biggest mandates so one of the best ways to engage is to sort of get in touch with governments or people or institutions that are accredited to the COP and know that their inputs would have a long way to go in integrating into policy than just sort of going as an individual outside this framework which is structured by the UNFCCC yeah. Okay I think that's it for your group thank you so much that was also quite a lot is there someone who want to share for group A yeah I picked some notes but then yeah if you want. I'll give it a go sure so we started with some introductions of the group members hearing more about their work contextualizing the session so it seems we had a large show out from the civil society sector so very much framed discussions from the organizational level how we could better incorporate youth into designing these programs and incorporate those intergenerational aspects that way as well so from that we took a few tangents we looked into the effect of rural work and how that may affect youth participation so trying to work with local communities and trying to contextualize the issues so drawing back youth from the central framing but trying to position them as stakeholders in respect that they are directly affected by the issues we face so they are important voices to listen to and framing them in some cases as victims of these issues to be able to again that voice potential pros and cons of such method we talked also about trying to enforce some quotas so Finn very wisely brought up the need to add these positionings into financing and organizational structuring so the possibility of quotas as an enforcement measure towards youth participation and towards intergenerational dialogues that way which was fascinating we also had the point brought up that youth as a stakeholder is an interesting way of framing the issue because youth are so diverse so we had a brief discussion on how that may affect the potential which we take forward in terms of recognising the diversity within the youth movement and recognising this as an evolving field of pursuit potential to then have to integrate youth led organizations and social entrepreneurship as well as the more traditional figureheads traditional corporate stakeholders and charities NGOs so some of the complexity of the position we're faced with some of the complexity of the field we're working in I raised a point about mass individualism so trying to place the individual be it youth or otherwise within a wider collective context so be that the youth movement within wider sustainable dialogue or be that an individual within a team within a project and the potential for that philosophy, that model to be able to improve outcomes finally we discussed some other potential methods so branding storytelling framing which can be used to incentivize youth to be part of dialogues to participate in new generational programs and using that as a route to community building networking as a means for engaging youth in sustainable development Thank you so much earlier I think basically that is what happened in the group A and yeah of course we discussed really very relevant things some are more re-emphasizing the need and some are actually speaking direct to solutions that are being created on the ground but then I would bring that into the summary that would come soon but then at this point I want us to look back what have transpired so far there are people who probably have not gotten the opportunity to speak I want to open this particular period to the participants you have a question you have an input to make or you want to clarify something the floor is open you can either raise your hand and I will notify you to speak or you can type in the chat and then I would pick it up from there so please the floor is open to all the participants now there is a question in the chat okay I'm not having access I'm not seeing could you read it out please Janet Chapman is asking is anyone here working with the youth groups in Tanzania please I will give that a quick go I mean from my side Green Africa Youth Organization we are not working directly with youth groups but we have partner organizations that are working with youth groups so I mean I guess that the best is to probably get involved when we are together in touch with our partner in Tanzania yeah also in group A we had Katarina who is kind of involved in I think working with some of the islands or something like that with respect to youth in Tanzania if she wants to say something about this another person should cry me Dixoni says that they are as well you can definitely meet yourself and speak if you like thank you for helping me fish out the comments if you have questions as well we still have seven minutes to answer questions can I ask a question please my name is Jess I'm calling in from Melbourne in Victoria Australia so hello everybody around the world it's really cool to see everybody unfortunately I looked in a little bit late to the session it may have already been raised but something we find in the context of our adaptation work is that youth tend to engage more in the mitigation side of things particularly around advocating for change and mitigating the problem and it's you know Greta's school youth movements and others that quite a lot of youth is engaged on that side of things and perhaps less so on the adaptation question and the adaptation issue that we really need to engage youth on as well in terms of being part of the decision making and actions for the future I'm just really interested to know and I understand the context is very different for everybody that's in this room as well in terms of the level of engagement and I think that's something that others deal with and how they go about that and obviously we've heard a little bit about how creating a narrative that youth can really buy into is really important but whether that's an issue or something that others deal with too I think that does move quickly Yes thank you Yeah so Jessica thanks for bringing this definitely this is a big issue something that our paper last year looked a bit into that to see why conversations from the youth side very mitigation led earlier this year also looked at about that looked into that in the currently holding consultations around the world with young people to figure out how to really make adaptation part of the conversation for young people the challenge that they understand we've come to also from COP25 in Madrid where we were sort of also talking with children in the climate changing climate coalition and others take hold have been that it's difficult for people to understand what adaptation is and that is the simple thing for any other thing it's very simple less flights straightforward if you talk about climate insurance what do you mean by that the whole concept of adaptation has been misconceptualized by some young people to believe that means that we don't do anything about climate change we just try to get used to it so this is what we discovered as sort of a narrative for young people and hence they would go in for what is more mainstream which is it less meat less flights reducing consumerism these are all important very very factual and we have to do all that but sort of getting to break adaptation down to say that look this is all important but some countries and some communities need the solutions today and even if we suck out all the CO2 it's still not going to do so much help so you need to put this into your conversations as well we need to increase funding for sort of community based work that increase resiliency and sort of reduces vulnerability of communities so this is something that is a big challenge and currently I'm leading the establishment of a youth strategy for the Global Central Adaptation in Rotterdam and what that is doing is called the Youth Adaptation Network and I'll put a link in the chat later on right after I'm done but it's to bring young people together to build their capacity on adaptation and ensure that they really understand what it means virtually and in practice as well so that they can make this part of their advocacy because advocacy is really one way as it stands now and that is not really going to help giving the vulnerabilities that exist mostly in the global south and also the small island developing states yeah and Elliot please compliment this yeah sure now some really good points that you raise from my perspective I was doing some research on this as well earlier this year and found that it's the knowledge gap, the educational barrier which is causing this choice in terms of the youth where they dedicate their time and effort so obviously adaption policy work some of the more high level dialogues are quite challenging to engage with we've seen a positive feedback loop which has been created in terms of youth historically aren't participating these dialogues they don't have access to these larger stages which means that they don't have to learn their skills and they don't typically engage in some of that protocol the policy work which means that there's no rising knowledge there's no rising skills set as we see the youth movement progress so it's very much working towards the actionable results the deliverables which I mean they feel that make a tangible impact of course they are but not aiming for some of the other work so some of the policy work and some of what traditional organizations are doing very much focus on social entrepreneurship very much focus on youth movements as opposed to integrating into some of the existing networks just do that entry barrier so it's about trying to take down some of those traditional barriers which may be preventing them from doing so but also trying to incentivize youth to reach out to these networks to engage themselves breaking down some of these polarization that way as well thank you Elliot and Josh anyone want to contribute on the same question or is there another question we can move to okay alright so at this point I would take us through to summarize what we have been discussing so far and and of course what does it mean as far as community based adaptation is concerned at this point where do we go from where we are now we have talked about quite a lot of things and we have come to almost the end of the meeting so at the start of this we the main focus was to kind of understand the issue and share experiences, share good practices if there are any and to find out what are the active ways that we can overcome these barriers with respect to youth engagement in adaptation and then if possible specifically identify opportunities that can strengthen the inclusion of youth in this in providing these solutions and so far we can take from the lessons learned from the first two speakers that elaborated on why young people are sort of incapacitated with respect to the knowledge they have with respect to the credibility they have what sort of recognition that young people have and of course material financial resources limitations that do not really permit them to operate in full scale and also with our second speaker who also made it clear that when it comes to the word activism young people are kind of very much at the front but then beyond that what happens beyond the activism beyond hitting the streets how much knowledge do they have to contribute to the process and how much opportunities exist for them so the second part where we had to go into groups was much more focused on digging deeper into finding solutions to what we are discussing and at this point we discussed more of how do we make sure that they push and pull factors that draw young people out of communities where they could be actively contributing to adaptation activities how do we bridge that gap and talk about the need to diversify the conversation on this matter and make sure that young people are being put in line to elaborate on the impact of climate change on youth and also to use that protocol to make them major stakeholders in the discusses one thing that was quite interesting was a case in Kenya where Finn talked about the fact that it's actually also difficult to mobilize young people when you go to the rural area so even though we talk about these limitations created or perceived to be created by the structures but then when you go into the rural communities the problems exist in areas of being able to even mobilize and then where you have the resources that are required then you have the opportunity to suggest some quota system but you have to also speak with the elders there so it means that we need to look at this whole thing throughout the structure and not just to see youth as people who exist outside these structures and also there were a lot of points on the fact that great entrepreneurship is actually a great opportunity but we also had people speaking directly to the role that they are playing with respect to coordinating that young people there are so many organizations actually working in these areas of integrating, bridging the gap between young people and the old quote on quote but then these are also working in silos and we need to coordinate these activities make sure that the agencies are coordinating in terms of how they want to include young people in adaptation matters which I think is very very crucial then we talk about the role of policy process to include and to strengthen young people in adaptation activities and why this needs to factor in state actors actively because that is the policy levels are normally championed by state actors promoting collaborative intergenerational research work is a point I think is really is really really important and I was happy that it has been raised something we should look further to develop it if we can actually create that portfolio where young researchers are able to collaborate with experienced researchers then we can overcome the gap with respect to not according young people's work with credibility and also an avenue for young people to become more influential or to become actual decision makers with respect to the decision process yes, two things were mentioned here there's the need to have a cluster with respect to UNF triple C triple C meetings processes yes, very very crucial we need to see where do you belong and at what stage are they involved and what capacity do they really play are they just involved as tokenism kind of as mentioned earlier and then at a point of we as young people and as organizations working to include young people looking at national government decision process to tap into these parties because that is where decisions happen that is where representations are selected and if we can capitalize on the national level and make sure that we look ourselves deeply in then we would have the opportunity to represent fully so I think all this are just few points that were able to capture and there are more opportunities for us to discuss this further but I would leave this point at this point to Alexander but before that I think also what we have to now consider as our next steps but I will let Josh come in at some point is that this discussion should not be an annual discussion as we are doing now with CBA but then as we go out of this we would need number one to make sure that we track each other who is doing what, who is at where and then if we are pursuing similar goals that we can integrate, let us do that because if we leave this discussion and we don't carry this forward to our various points of work then we probably wouldn't go that far so next I don't know if it's Alex or Joshua how much time do we have and what do we do next after this, thank you everyone Thank you, thank you everyone for joining thank you Desmond for the wonderful moderation to close the event and to bring it up to an end I will say that I'm very happy to receive all your inputs and all the conversation that happened and next steps so for this week tomorrow we have a session at 2pm which is intergenerational dialogue I mentioned the Global Center on Adaptation which is leading a global program on integrating young people in adaptation or putting youth at the center of adaptation also working on rural development, water infrastructure and locally led action and tomorrow we will have an intergenerational dialogue with the leadership of the GCA and I'll be happy to have some of you sign up for that event as well at 2pm Central European time. On Thursday we have a session on innovative financing for locally led action where we will be talking about how to get finance to flow to youth led projects at the community level and same we will have some practitioners and some sort of experienced people with case studies on how they were able to do this to share the experience with us so we're happy to have you there as well and we will have another session on technology how technology adaptation technology can enhance rural development also on Thursday so please have a look at this and we look forward to engaging you in these sessions as well thanks a lot and I'll hand over to Alex and Aliona if they have any final remarks on the logistics or any details thank you everyone for coming