Summary of the Event
The event kicked off at 7am GMT with a morning yoga video performed by Adriene.The Virtual Symposium hosted over 25 renowned sustainability leaders, environmentalists, researchers, specialists on health, botanic conservation, resource management sustainable agriculture and building from around the world. Speaker such as Jeffrey Sachs, Adenike Akinsemolu, Marc Rosen, amongst others share their insights on our path towards sustainable development.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Walid Machrouh is a Youth activist, social entrepreneur, and mind challenger. He's particularly focusing his efforts in enabling creative thinking, entrepreneurship, and innovation for the common social good.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
S. Duygu Sever is a passionate researcher who works on the intertwined relationship between energy politics, sustainability and human security. She is a PhD Candidate in Political Science and International Relations at Koç University, Turkey.
Q & A (SELECTED)
Dugyu Sever: Sustainability and the youth…how do you read the relationship between the two? What are the roles of the youth in the green growth and in the transition towards sustainable systems?
Walid Machrouh: I think discussing it is really relevant in the fact that when we talk about sustainability we talk about sustaining resources, opportunities, and something for the future. And talking about youths, they are big components of the society, like people of the age of 30 years old are presently more than 1.8 billion people which is a huge big number and 5, 4, 3, 16 years are the ones who are going to manage the resources. So we should sustain the resources so that they can manage it and also this should be part of their production and first reflection. This is why it is important to match these two topics, sustainable development and the youth. We make a big mistake in thinking it is just good to sensitize young people, to tell them that it’s good to preserve the environment, be responsible towards the society etc. and that makes us now in a supporting mode not in a change maker mood. And after 5 years we expect from them to be the change makers. There is this big contrast that says we are out of the future but they are out of present now and we should learn from the past, have the skills and abilities to analyze the good practices and the bad practices that we had. We keep doing it from the past to the present so that they can build with us together this future and a sustainable future.
Dugyu Sever: What is the knowledge level of the youth with regards to sustainability? How do we fill up the knowledge gap about sustainability among the youth? What institutions and platforms are available to educate the youth on sustainable development? (I merged questions 2and 3 here, I think this would also create a space to talk about all your innovative projects linking sdgs and the youth).
Walid Machrouh: Before the COVID era, I would say that there is only a minority of young people who are interested by this sustainable development and they know what they should do and how they should contribute. Before it’s like they don’t feel that sustainable development is a must to have but only on the state of it’s nice to have. They see it as a luxury thing like having only the basic needs such as food, drinks, having a good place where we can sleep, dreaming about their career, how they can succeed professionally etc. and they forget. Although it is the responsibilities of government, institutions, and schools to give them these big highlights, showcasing the importance of sustainable development. I have worked with so many youth organizations, each year as we support more than 6,000 students, we can see the values, change, progress, the soft care which is the important thing. It’s the soft care because we don’t give them the fire sure resources, an open door but we give them the trust to experiment and to fail. And I think that’s what we should expect from young people If we want them to be included on this reflection and to feel that they are concerned. They should start by trying to experiment why it is important to preserve the natural resources, think about an inclusive ecosystem, and care about prosperity and not having social inequalities. And this reflects to the pandemic, with the pandemic, as a human being we feel all together that we are equal, that we have to manage all the diseases, negative impacts, and if we don’t collaborate together and start by initiating a small initiatives. Subsequently, we as young people create opportunities we got to just assume that what is happening in the world, we just like consume it with no reflection and feedback.
And with the project we are working on with HBQ called Design Post-COVID normal and its idea is to have the participation of young people from 24 countries that they think all together about how they are affected, how they can switch the roles from an affected victim persons to the ones who created and think about the solutions. We are having so many amazing individuals. The UN are also doing a great job by having the youth envoy, the campaign relating to the UN 75 that engaged young people all over the world. Also all the initiatives related to technologies and advanced technologies or to the community resilience, they were initiated by young people in their countries because they want to see something change positively in their communities and that is how we can really build a good connection and the good bridge between young people and sustainable development.
Quotes
“when we talk about sustainability we talk about sustaining resources, opportunities, and something for the future. ”
“Before the COVID era, I would say that there is only a minority of young people who are interested by this sustainable development and they know what they should do and how they should contribute. ”
FURTHER READING
Bastien, Sheri & Holmarsdottir, Halla. 2017. The Sustainable Development Goals and the Role of Youth-Driven Innovation for Social Change.
K. Murthy, Ranjani. 2017. Sustainable Development Goals and the Youth.