Canadian Youth Climate Action Jam Session - Final Report

C A N A D I A N C L I M A T E J A M

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 REPORT | APRIL 2020

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Introduction Detailed Outcomes Knowledge Sharing Ideation Collaboration

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Acknowledgements

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Appendix A

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The authors wish to acknowledge that this report was written on the traditional, ancestral, and unceeded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations, and Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The Canadian Youth Climate Action Jam Session convened representatives from youth-based climate organizations across Canada to facilitate knowledge sharing, ideation and collaboration on youth-led climate action projects. 2020 is the first time since the Paris Agreement that countries will come together with new carbon reduction targets, and new or revised national climate action plans. Canada has pledged to net zero emissions by 2050, and over 400 Canadian municipalities have declared climate emergencies.

With 2020 being a crucial year in climate action globally and in Canada, this event, ahead of the Leading Change and GLOBE Forum conferences, provided space for youth to engage, empower and connect in order to accelerate and amplify the impact of their projects.

This session was convened by Global Shapers from Toronto and Vancouver, Puninda Thind and George Benson.

O U T C O M E S

Knowledge Sharing: updated one another on upcoming climate programming and advocacy opportunities in 2020.

Ideation: identified potential alignments, gaps, and new climate-action related project opportunities in 2020 and beyond in breakout sessions.

Collaboration: coordinated on outreach to governments and other institutions to advance collective youth-led climate action efforts.

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The central themes that emerged as areas of concern for the youth gathered can be broadly categorized into the following: Climate & Equity: including connection between climate and racial justice issues, and responsibilities for Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

Just Transition: advancing reskilling and up-skilling opportunities for the existing and prospective workforce to accelerate the shift towards an environmentally sustainable and regenerative economy.

Climate Finance: many participants are working on campaigns across the spectrum of climate finance: from building new tools for investment, to building capacity for climate intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs.

Youth-Led Climate Governance: advancing youth engagement on boards, councils and/or corporate committees, to help shape decisions and co-create policies and procedures that prioritize concerns of youth.

Living Library of Climate Action Campaigns (2020-2021): The organizations participating in the session collected over fifty climate action campaigns and projects that are running throughout 2020 and 2021. These campaigns are being collected in a ‘living library’ that the conveners will collaboratively maintain and develop over time.

NOTE: The list of campaigns is not exhaustive - if you have any additional campaigns to add to the list, please contact the conveners to retrieve access to the living library document.

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Three key priorities were identified based on discussion of existing efforts and identification of key needs within the Canadian youth climate movement: JUST TRANSITION & INCLUSIVE CLIMATE ACTION POLITICAL ADVOCACY FOR ADVANCING CLIMATE ACTION CLIMATE FINANCE For each of these priorities within the youth climate movement, the participants discussed: Major identified needs Synergies with existing projects/initiatives Areas where youth are well positioned to intervene and advance new projects/initiatives

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MAJOR IDENTIFIED NEEDS Climate action demands new skill sets from young workers: The shift to a low carbon, sustainable, and regenerative economy is requiring new skills and qualifications from the workforce.

Engagement with, and learning from Indigenous communities: More work needs to be done to reach out to indigenous communities within the youth climate movement. Indigenous peoples have been on the forefront of the solutions to the climate crisis. Traditional Knowledge must not only be utilized alongside non-Indigenous ways of knowing, but the communities and individuals producing said knowledge must actively be sought out as leaders on just transition and climate justice.

Bring an intergenerational lens to the just transition conversation: It is not only about reforming the existing curriculum for current students, but also about providing opportunities for reskilling & upskilling to the existing workforce in industries that are not compatible with a green economy.

Bridging the gap between youth and workers to promote intergenerational knowledge transfer.

Centralizing access and equity (i.e. ensuring access to reskilling and upskilling opportunities to historically marginalized communities).

Reducing silos within the climate movement: It is critical to bridge the gap between addressing multiple environmental crises (e.g. biodiversity and climate crisis) and placing justice and well-being at the center of the response.

Storytelling around climate (i.e. contextualized learning): Developing a narrative around just transition in a way that resonates with our communities and brings new communities into the fold: e.g. faith-based communities, intersection of climate and public health, valuing care work and decent work, and so on.

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EXISTING PROJECTS Youth Guides on Sustainable Business: Several youth groups like the Canadian Business Youth Council for Sustainable Development are creating guides on sustainable and regenerative business with input from senior executives and thought leaders. Business schools are not currently providing students with the tools and knowledge that they will need to effectively operate in an economic system impacted by climate risk. There is a growing demand from students for this content.

Student Energy’s Global Energy Skills Program: The program provides career skill building opportunities to students in partnership with leading organizations.

POTENTIAL IDEAS Shadow boards: Developing new and formalized mechanisms of meaningful inclusion and engagement of young voices at decisionmaking levels of organizations (e.g. private companies, nonprofits, public institutions etc.).

Getting to unreached audiences: (e.g. mid-career, non-climate focused careers and workplaces) which encompasses majorities of people by: employing a ‘train the trainer’ model, identifying community nodes and leaders (e.g. campus athletes, social media influencers, etc.) and co-developing content and tactics with them for their stakeholders and audiences.

GOING FORWARD Convene: recognized the importance of being aware of who our networks (as a youth climate movement) are reaching and who they are not reaching. Identifying community ambassadors and tailoring entry points can help expand our reach.

Construct: materials and climate narratives with a hopeful tone that the youth climate movement can bring outside the ‘core’ climate community in order to build a broader coalition.

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MAJOR IDENTIFIED NEEDS Reaching beyond the usual suspects: Continue to bring more people into the space by reaching out beyond the young people who are often on the stage, or involved in consultation events.

Tangibility of issues: Major issues around UNDRIP, or the ‘climate emergency,’ can feel like abstract concepts, both to individuals and to organizations. Building a model for what operationalization of these concepts looks like, and how they can be made tangible is important.

Embrace specificity and create a united voice in the youth climate movement: Setting the baseline on meaningful youth engagement and principles, and addressing shared challenges across the youth (climate) movement, which include: Burnout Financial barriers Organizational structure(s) Lack of resources for youth organizations: Scaling engagement to new spaces and new levels of influences.

Challenges with bringing in new faces and better distributing youth in roles of influence.

Need for capacity building between youth organization and movements, particularly on issues such as fundraising and strategic planning.

POTENTIAL IDEAS Intra-movement capacity building: Sharing resources and best practices within the youth climate movement, with a particular focus on organizational development, fundraising, communications, and broadbased inclusivity.

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Communications and political advocacy training: Building the capacity of youth leaders to advocate to political and other leaders through mentorship, sharing of best practices, and ongoing coordination between established networks and organizations.

Youth engagement best practices: Working as a youth movement to define and codify expectations around engagement and distributing these to different levels of government, nonprofits, networks, and wherever else deemed relevant. This can be used as the baseline of expectations for how young people expect to be meaningfully engaged.

Distributing and coordinating work: Working as a movement to define key issue areas and understand the role particular organizations are playing and in some cases, streamlining work with mutually agreedupon roles and responsibilities.

GOING FORWARD Convene: on an ongoing basis (virtually or in-person) to coordinate on specific ideas, share knowledge, and collaborate strategically.

Construct: guidelines, principles, and other information for decisionmakers and institutional engagement teams to set the baseline for meaningful youth engagement.

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MAJOR IDENTIFIED NEEDS Business culture shift: While recently there has been rising momentum of large organizations setting climate targets, many businesses have not yet engaged with or implemented meaningful strategies to tackle the climate crisis and continue to practice ‘business as usual.’

Shift capital flows: Current investment patterns are insufficiently aligned to address the climate crisis, and in many cases, are actively exacerbating it, as well as perpetuating various vectors of marginalization and inequality. New financial frameworks (e.g. Task Force for Climate Related Financial Disclosures) continue to be needed.

Transparency to governments and consumers: Business reporting on sustainability and climate risk management is highly varied, and often voluntary. Young people continue to demand accessible, science-based, mandatory disclosures on different elements of sustainability performance.

Collective buying power: Through public procurement and aggregated consumer demand, there is a continuing need to leverage collective buying power to reshape supply chains and product offerings.

Pre-competitive collaboration to enable scalability of climate solutions Addressing climate change as a risk management strategy: The private sector, despite many industry-specific leadership groups, has still not adequately understood the climate crisis as a direct, existential threat to their work - embedding climate action as a risk management strategy at every level and in every industry is critical moving forward.

EXISTING PROJECTS Workplace activism: Millennials in the workplace are demanding concrete action on climate change.

There is increased demand for green jobs coming from many advocates and practitioners like Our Time, Global Green Growth Institute, and Climate Reality Project.

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Youth mentorship on entrepreneurship and financing: Efforts have been made to create ecosystems of social innovation and climate intrapreneurs/entrepreneurs.

Youth are supporting other youth to advance these efforts. For example, Youth Climate Lab is leading work with the World Bank, and others, to advance youth-led climate financing solutions.

Consumer education and advocacy: Several youth groups are researching available financial products, both new and traditional, that respond to the climate crisis.

Advocacy is ongoing to financial institutions to provide better product offerings on Environment and Social Governance (ESG), carbonscreening, and other impact-related metrics.

Some youth-focused consumer awareness and literacy work is also emerging on retail ESG, climate-risk and broadly, impact investing.

POTENTIAL IDEAS Youth Toolkit: A guide to call out businesses for greenwashing, with references to global standards and best practices.

Youth Climate Governance: Ensure representation of youth climate voices on public and private advisory boards and advocacy groups (e.g., the We Mean Business Coalition).

Youth-Inclusive Financing: Need for direct funding mechanisms to support youth-led climate solutions, and creation of new mechanisms to advance for-profit ventures, and community resiliency-building efforts.

GOING FORWARD Convene: Using the position we hold as youth to advance climate action in workplaces, and via organizations where we hold meaningful positions.

Construct: Mechanisms to advance youth climate governance, corporate accountability on climate action, and youth-led climate ventures.

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C O L L A B O R A T I O N

At the conclusion of the session, attendees and facilitators discussed ways for youth climate leaders across the country to connect, collaborate, and strategize on an ongoing basis. The short time period of the session did not allow for an in-depth conversation on an exact structure, but the following key features were identified: Any convening mechanism must be a youth-centric space that is run for and by youth.

Any ongoing convening mechanism should ideally be supported by other tools and resources, including a tracking system for ongoing projects, an events and projects calendar, guidelines, project templates, project management mentoring, and other supports.

Any convening mechanism should carefully curate ongoing conversations for different groups within the youth climate movement to work on particular issue-areas.

Several attendees also raised concerns that should inform considerations about future youth climate planning: Abortive attempts at youth climate networks have been made in the past and these have petered out due to youth leadership turn-over.

Government funding is not only unreliable, but may come with expectations and political perceptions that could compromise the safety and openness of the collaboration.Â

To advance this idea of an ongoing convening structure, the conveners hosted a conversation in April 2020 to continue to explore this work.

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A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We thank representatives from the following organizations for participating in this event: British Columbia Council for International Cooperation (BCCIC) Canadian Business Youth Council for Sustainable Development CityHive Climate Guides Foundation for Environmental Stewardship Global Shapers Calgary Global Shapers Halifax Global Shapers Montreal Global Shapers Toronto Global Shapers Vancouver McGill University's Desautels Sustainability Network Natural Capital Offsetters Student Energy UBC Climate Hub Youth4Nature Youth Climate Lab YWCA Canada

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In conversations after this convening, the authors were reminded of the incredible past work done by different youth organizations to convene, plan, and amplify the voices of youth to governments across the country and to coordinate with one another nationally.

Below are some examples of this work: Youth Energy Vision — Student Energy and CityHive (2017) A national vision for Canada's energy future, developed by over 7,000 young people from across the country.

Raising Ambition: Young Canadians’ recommendations for an enhanced Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Agreement — BCCIC (2019) Youth recommendations on improving Canada's NDCs, based on their experience at COP24 in Madrid.

Youth Recommendations to Canada's Ambassador on Climate Change — Vancouver Global Shapers (2019) Youth recommendations on better coordination and collaboration with youth for international climate events.

Our 2030 — Youth Climate Lab (2019) A national report on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Strategy in Canada, through an online consultation of over 40,000 people.

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A B O U T

T H E

C O N V E N O R S

Puninda Thind is a Sustainability Consultant, specializing in sustainability strategy development and implementation. Puninda has previously worked in sustainable investing in the commercial real estate investment sector where she led the implementation of portfolio-wide initiatives focused on climate resilience and corporate sustainability reporting. Puninda holds a Bachelors of Environment and Business from the University of Waterloo. She was recognized as one of Canada’s top 30 under 30 sustainability leaders as well as a Clean50 honouree. Outside of work, Puninda is involved in the local community to advance social impact as a Global Shaper, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, and as an organizer with Climate Justice Peel. Outside of work, Puninda enjoys spending time with family and friends, exploring the city, and painting.

George Benson is a resilience practitioner and thinker working on climate change, urban planning, and inclusive economic development. He is the cofounder of the Vancouver-based nonprofit, the Climate Migrants and Refugees Project, and in his day-job works for City of Vancouver’s economic development agency on zero-carbon economic planning. He is also a North American Regional Climate Lead within the World Economic Forum’s young leaders network, the Global Shapers Community. An urban planner by training, he has been previously been involved in the national leadership of the Canadian and American urban planning associations, and has worked in migration policy in Bangladesh, as well as on climate adaptation in Canada and the Philippines. In 2018 he was awarded the City of Vancouver’s Award of Excellence for his work on climate change. George is a noted movie trailer aficionado.

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