Over 100 youth from across the world gathered in Yokohama, Japan for the International Youth Conference on Biodiversity (IYCB) from 25th – 31st August 2024.
The International Youth Conference on Biodiversity (IYCB) aimed to cultivate a global network of active grassroots youth dedicated to restoring and nurturing the world’s relationship with biodiversity. The conference served as a platform for dialogue, exchange and creative expression, exploring concepts such as eco-anxiety, the role of indigenous peoples as stewards and impacts they face by development projects and colonisation, transformative change in education, kinship, and the importance of youth in decision-making processes.
Participants were able to share their experiences and plan actions in support of the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF), and National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAP). Ms. Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, gave official remarks at the opening ceremony of the IYCB. Ms. Schomaker encouraged youth to continue taking action to address the biodiversity crisis, as the KM-GBF goal to reduce biodiversity loss by 2030 is not far away, with the vision to live in harmony with nature by 2050 is just around the corner.
The one-week programme highlighted the role that youth play as change makers in shaping the world to live in harmony and peace with nature. There was also a special session where the Acting Ambassador of Colombia to Japan gave an address to the IYCB participants, highlighting that the 16th Conference of the Parties to the CBD will be hosted in Cali, Colombia in October 2024. The Acting Ambassador advised that there are over 1,435 events planned to take place at COP16,and that a Youth Forum will take place at the COP on October 19th.
NES Biodiversity Coordinator, Ms. Jessie Nicholson, was selected as one of the ~100 successful applicants out of 9,000 applications. From the Pacific region, 8 participants attended the IYCB, representing 6 Pacific island countries – Cook Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The Pacific representatives hope to establish a Pacific Chapter within the Global Youth Biodiversity Network, and will present a statement about outcomes of the IYCB from
the Pacific youth, to the CBD Pacific Pre-COP16 meeting in Samoa in mid-September 2024. The conference was organised by the Global Youth Biodiversity Network in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment of Japan, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the City of Yokohama and the Japan Biodiversity Fund.
For more highlights from the IYCB, see the GYNB social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.
