TakingITGlobal

Section II: Awareness and Education Education is an important way to mitigate the effects of climate change by fostering an informed community. As youth, we believe in the importance of education, but we emphasize that education extends well beyond the classroom. Self-awareness, reflection, and connecting to others are essential techniques to educate ourselves and become more aware. Technology can facilitate all of these techniques - learning from and sharing with others through social media allows us to engage with our global community. Youth participation in social media campaigns enables us to better understand climate change impact, mitigation, and adaptation strategies at a personal level, and educates us about effective courses of action. We believe that further education and awareness are needed to address the issues of climate change and obstacles related to water, agriculture, and consumption. Water is essential to all life, and yet much of this vital resource is wasted due to lack of awareness, profit motives and lack of efficient systems. We believe that through education, we can teach youth about water shortages, droughts, and water scarcity issues. In becoming knowledgeable on water conservation, we change our behaviour; When we save water, we save ourselves. Agriculture is the source of economic growth in many countries around the globe. We strongly believe that by using education to spread sustainable agricultural techniques and technologies, we can better protect our water and our land. Farmers should engage in sustainable growing techniques such as using crop rotation, avoiding excessive tillage, managing pests, and preventing soil compaction. ese techniques can be adopted today across the globe, and can result in a vast reduction in emissions - and a stronger, more resilient, agricultural ecosystem. We need to change our lifestyles and our behaviors, particularly in how we consume products. Part of being a consumer in the 21st century is the responsibility of being conscious of what you take in, the amount of it, and the impacts your consumption has on the environment and people around the world. Individuals should be aware of their ecolog- ical impact, including their carbon footprint and water burden. Just as COP-participating states in a post-Paris world must monitor their emis- sions and report their findings regularly, their people can participate with frequent re-evaluation of their personal ecological footprint. To make such reporting a normal part of everyday life, it should be introduced during early education, because young people become future leaders. As individu- als, we must engage with the global community to reduce our collective ecological footprint and collaboratively change the way we view our personal responsibilities for climate change. "We can't expect people to make a change if those people don't know why they should. As a plan for the future, we need to work on educating people how big a problem climate change is and that it is happening fast." Lillian Osborne High School - Edmonton, Canada "e main strategy we could use to combat climate change … [is] to educate because our youth is our future, and people still haven't realized the seriousness of this issue" Lincoln Community School - Accra, Ghana www.decarbonize.me

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