The Outlook for Youth Leadership
Submitted by: Ms. Kehkashan Basu
Founder of Green Hope
2016 International Children’s Peace Prize Winner
NGOCSD-NY Honorary Adviser for Youth Leadership & Climate Action
Our world today has the highest number of children and young people more than ever before. The future, ostensibly, belongs to us, but we are helpless to change or influence the present that will determine the way we live. Our dignity, or rather indignity, is determined by the insatiable hunger of the global economic powerhouses which turn virgin rainforests into ugly mining pits and pollute the pristine water of our rivers with toxic chemicals, pushing thousands of species to the brink of extinction. This is the harsh reality that stares us in the face , but many of us choose to either look away or shrug helplessly thinking it is someone else’s problem.
This must change and this is why young people like me are speaking out and demanding conservation of the environment and the right to live with dignity, because we are the citizens of tomorrow --- but we will not live to see tomorrow if our today is not taken care of.
This led me to establish Green Hope in 2012, on my return from Rio+20 to engage, educate and empower young people to take actions on mitigating climate change, achieve biodiversity conservation , promote the use of renewable energy , gender equality , sustainable consumption, social upliftment and future justice. Green Hope runs a lot of environmental activities such as recycling of waste, cleanups on beaches and mangroves, tree planting and awareness campaigns engaging hundreds of young people in the process. We conduct “Environmental Academies” which are workshops and conferences, conducted “by youth – for youth”, through which we spread awareness about various aspects of sustainability. Green Hope now has collaborations and chapters in 10 countries across the globe with over 1000 young people engaged as volunteer members.
My advocacy work has been further strengthened by my appointment as the Honorary Advisor for the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY opening new avenues to engage a greater section of my fraternity. It is a privilege for me to have this role and it enhances my ability to convey the needs of young people in making a meaningful difference to the sustainable development process.
I feel immensely humbled to have been awarded the 2016 International Children’s Peace Prize. There were a record number of 120 nominees from 49 countries and it is a huge honor for me to be chosen as the winner. I believe the jury recognized the importance of environmental conservation and sustainability and the need for children to be involved in driving this change while deciding on the winner. People will now know that children's rights and environmental protection are connected and extremely important for the future generations.
Our rights can never be secured if the environment that we live in continues to be plundered and degraded wantonly. Future Generations deserve to inherit an environment in the same pristine conditions that our forefathers did. More species have been obliterated in the past century than in the entire documented history of our planet. Climate change threatens our survival yet policy makers continue to ignore the dire consequences of global warming, while our energy hungry economies choke the atmosphere through fossil fuel emissions.
Environmental apathy is at the root of this problem and this must be done away with. Young people, whose future is at stake, are extremely concerned about the desecration of the pristine beauty of our environment. It is time for us to take action and take charge of our destiny.