My name is Kamran Hussain and I am representing the Youth Forum on Empowering Youth with Earth Observation Information for Climate Actions. The Youth Forum represents the Hindu-Kush-Himalayan regions from China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar and Afghanistan. We are among the hundreds of millions of young people who are frightened about their future because we know that we will become in the age group of 62 to 68 in the year 2050. We read science and we understand that we must now release ourselves from business as usual and take a momentous leap forward to grasp our sustainable future with both hands. Because we all know that HKH region needs much more attention from local to global levels as hotspot of climate change and calls for urgent action. Climate Change, no doubt, is one of the most critical global concerns of this generation where the youth of the region will face enormous challenges in future and our future depends on your decisions which you are going to take today. Therefore, it is important to actively engage us in the areas of preparedness, risk reduction, adaptation and mitigation because we, the youth, believe that we have innovative ideas and abundant energy to take the local actions.
We would like to thank specially ICIMOD and also NASA, USAID and SERVIR-Himalaya for recognizing the role of youth as agents for change and effective communicators because raising awareness among youth and engaging them in action on ground is an important factor for addressing the climate change issues in HKH.
Earth Observation is proving to be vital tool to improve our understanding the climate change phenomenon by providing information on the changes on various attributes which are indicators to climate change and will also help us to use the scientific approaches in advocacy.
The six day youth forum exposed us to various earth observation tools like satellite images, GIS/RS and Google earth to analyze the impacts of climate change on land, water, air and glaciers and identifying the climate change issues in our communities. The forum enhanced our capacities to use the climate, EO data and products more effectively to integrate climate risk management into national policies for sustainable development.
To the delegates of this symposium: you have only few months to improve your position and we implore you to work harder. We urge you too to take ambitious nationality appropriate mitigation strategies to take action now. We can’t solve climate change without you. We would like to ask you, all here, a very important question which we think you will all take a moment to consider – How old will you be in the year 2050? I said that we will be in the age group of 62 to 68 hoping to retire after 4 decades of working for capacity building of youth on earth observation, awareness campaigns within the communities on climate change issues, bridging the data gaps between generations and institutions and decarbonising our society.
As a youth, we commit to working with all of you now and over forty years to achieve this transformation. Inter-generational equity is crucial but we need more than that because we are the people who will be implementing these targets.
To conclude : we challenge each one of you to come and meet us here and back home in your country and guarantee that you are confident that we still have a liveable planet in the year 2050? We need this guarantee because in 2050 we will still be here in this planet earth.
This platform will enable the participants of the different events during the Symposium to interact virtually, stay updated on the ongoing sessions and provide a room for debate and creative exchanges.
