THE ROLE OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH IN ENSURING ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY AT THE DISTRICT LEVEL Presented at the National Youth and Children’s Conference on Sustainable Development, held at the KNUST, Kumasi, 2-3 August, 2012, BY Sakeena K. Bonsu, National Director, Evergreen Club of Ghana

INTRODUCTION: The World in Need: The world has expressed the urgent need to ensure sustainable development. This is, among others, development that takes care of the present without jeopardizing the future. This logic defies further argument because globally, we are witnessing changes in environmental conditions that threaten the future of humanity. Sustainable Development (SD) is therefore a “do or die affair”.

Within the last few decades, the world including, many African countries and Ghana for that matter, has made significant achievements in socio-economic developments resulting in higher growth rates. However, this growth has been at a very high cost to the environment. It is therefore imperative to ensure that socio- economic growth is accompanied by sound environmental management.

On the basis of this, there is a new paradigm for development that requires that, if development has to be sustainable, then it must be supported by three pillars, viz: economic activities, sound environment and social equity. Of these three pillars, the most critical is the environment since the other two depend on it for their survival. We either choose to arrest environmental degradation now or We loose sustainability and perish.

The Good News The good news is that the global community from the United Nations level to National Governments has been working fervently to tackle the issues and problems at stake. Between 1992 and now, three major global conferences/summits have taken place, namely, RIO 1992, Johannesburg 2002 and RIO In between these programs a myriad of activities have been taking place all aimed at ensuring environmental sustainability..

. It is interesting to note that among the Millennium Development Goals, goal number seven is also about environmental sustainability. These major points of reference lead us to the national levels where Governments have developed frameworks, some very comprehensive, to address environmental problems to ensure sustainable development.

Problems/Solutions at the District level: Environmental problems usually originate from the local levels. At the local level the problems cover, among others, land degradation, deforestation, sand winning, illegal mining (galamsey), water pollution, erosion including coastal erosion and bad sanitation. It is therefore imperative that the solutions to these problems should begin at the local levels, with the communities through awareness creation, education, compliance, and enforcement of environmental legislation, among others.

Indeed the Local Government Act (Act 462, 1993) states that the “municipal and metropolitan district assemblies shall be responsible for the development, improvement and management of human settlements and the environment in the districts”, (section 10 (3) (e). The responsibility for the sustainable management of the environment at the district level therefore rests with the district assemblies. The big question is should the District Assemblies be left alone to carry this huge responsibility?

Involvement of other stakeholders Basically, environmental management should be everybody’s business, since our environment is our survival. As National and local governments play their part, other stakeholders, such as institutions, NGO’s, civil society, communities and individuals are also expected to play different roles in ensuring environmental sustainability.

. Agenda 21, the outcome of the 1992 Earth Summit, recognized the very important role of civil society and created nine (9) Major Groups, including Children and Youth Major Group to support the work of the UN, towards ensuring sustainable development. Today, these major groups are vibrant and playing very active roles from global to national levels.

The special role of Children and Youth in ensuring Environmental sustainability The world leaders, meeting at the RIO + 20 Forum gave further recognition to the role of Major Groups as outlined in the Outcome Document (Chapter II, Section C) and emphasized the distinct role expected of them. For the Children and Youth Major Group the Outcome has this to say, among others: “We stress the importance of the active participation of younger people in decision-making processes at all levels as the issues we are addressing have deep impact on the present and future generations ….”

The emphasis here is that you have been given the recognition at the global level and this should translate to the national and local levels. It is the first line action towards children and youth empowerment and it is very critical for all the reasons we can think of. Young people constitute a large part of the world’s population and represent the hope and future of the country. In other words, the youth of any country represents the hope for a better future and must therefore rise up to the challenge of ensuring sustainable development. In addition, young people will have to live longer with the consequences of current environmental problems; the earlier they pick up skills and knowledge for managing these problems the better.

Finding Solutions to the Environmental Problems: Brief workshop involving participants: The Action Learning approach  Break into regions, districts and communities  Think of the environmental problems you have heard and those you have encountered or seen physically.  Let’s identify them region by region  Why do we have these problems?  How do they occur?  What impacts do they have on the people? etc, etc.

 Further Q’s  Where do we want to go or what do we want to do?  How do we get there?  What is stopping us from getting there?  Further Q’s  Who knows about the problem?  Who cares about the problem?  Who can do something about the problem?

Further Q’s  What can I do at my own level and with others?  What skills do I need? -Communication -Interpersonal -Innovative skills Share the story of the Evergreen Club of Ghana and the Global Visionaries Set Objectives, draw action plans