Conference inspires young people to fight climate injustice in Brazil.

By Daniella Almeida, reporter for Agência Brasil - The children and teenagers participating in the 6th National Children and Youth Conference on the Environment (6th CNIJMA), in Luziânia, Goiás, returned to their homes this Friday (10), after experiencing five days of debates, games, lectures, thematic workshops and cultural attractions. 

In their baggage are plans to develop environmental education in their territories and to draw attention to the need to combat climate injustice, which typically disproportionately affects the most vulnerable and marginalized communities in Brazil, with rainfall, droughts, intense heat, and floods.

From Itapemirim, in Espírito Santo, Lara Guimarães Silva (pictured) hopes that ancestral knowledge and practices will be considered in the global offering of solutions that restore respect for nature and promote equal opportunities. According to the young woman, traditional communities are the ones that suffer the most from the effects of climate change, even though they contribute the least to climate change.

"Climate change is very bad because it affects the land, the soil, and the water cycle. This throws our family farming systems out of balance," he says.

At 13 years old, Lara was raised in the quilombola community of Graúna, which, according to her, greatly values ​​the climate. 

"With the erratic climate, we lose some of our traditions and cultures," says the teenager.

From the Northern Region, 12-year-old Jessyane Cavalcante notices that pollution, especially plastic pollution, affects the municipality of Mucajaí, in Roraima. At the national conference, she advocated for the recycling of plastic packaging to create a healthy territory. 

"Reusing improperly discarded PET materials in our village would make a difference in combating pollution," he argues.

In the reality of indigenous student Adryellen Silveira Bertoldo, 13, the impacts of climate events are visible and harm the small-scale food cultivation in the village where she lives, in Aracruz, Espírito Santo.

"What I learned here, I'm going to apply there. I want to engage in dialogue with my community and give my teacher ideas for activities we can do at school," she said.

In another biome, the Cerrado, young Elton Brenner, an 8th-grade student, took advantage of his last chance to participate in the National Children and Youth Conference on the Environment as a delegate, since he is already over the age limit of 14.

The school project that Elton Brenner brought from Goiatuba, in Goiás, to the conference reaffirms the commitment to sustainability, the environment, and community mobilization. The document suggests solutions to urban problems, such as more green areas within schools, improvements to city squares, water reuse, the planting of community gardens, and monitoring of solid waste disposal.

Elton believes that events like the conference create environmental awareness in students from an early age.

"Those who participate learn the importance of the environment, discover recycling, learn about vegetable gardens, gain insight into healthy eating, and even master how to manage a household," she assesses.

From another point in the state of Goiás, the young conference delegate Kleber Medeiros de Oliveira Júnior, 13 years old, observed that on the car journey from his city, São Miguel do Araguaia, to the location of the national conference in Luziânia, the native vegetation of the Cerrado had been replaced by extensive monoculture plantations.

"The fewer trees there are, the more heat there will be, because these trees stop producing oxygen, which will worsen the greenhouse effect," he states.

Kleber still laments the pollution of the river in the area. 

“People throw a lot of trash in the streets, in the sewers, and think nothing will happen. But the wind carries everything to the rivers, the fish eat it and end up dying,” he says.

More experienced

In its five previous editions, the children's and youth conference involved thousands of people. The 6th edition, with the theme "Let's transform Brazil with education and climate justice," counted more than 800 participants, all representatives from the preparatory stages.

One of the people who has accumulated experience from other children's and youth conferences on the environment and who was in Luziânia this week is the singer and composer Francisco Gelmo Sousa, 30 years old. The first conference he participated in was in 2006, at age 11, as a delegate representing Itapajé, in Ceará. 

The artist also had experience as a member of the youth facilitator collective in other editions of the national mobilization and as an organizer of the state-level stages of the event. In this 6th edition of the conference, in the role of educator, he was responsible for taking care of young people from Ceará during the trip. 

“It’s a great joy to see how this conference transforms our lives, opens doors, and shapes a present and a future for us. This connection with the environment has always been very strong for me,” she stated.

transformative conference

Other education managers present at the event, representing state delegations, are betting precisely on the socio-environmental transformative power of the conferences, both in raising awareness about the future and in the current habits of young participants, as well as in combating misinformation.

This is highlighted by Luana Batista, a civil servant at the Department of Education of the State of Piauí, who is responsible for the state's delegation. 

"These are projects that involve the school community and are successful. There is a significant change in attitudes, behaviors, and values ​​to improve the quality of life in our daily lives," he believes.

Luana Batista notices changes in young people who participate in conferences dealing with the environment. "These changes in attitude tend to improve them. Even their speech, as young leaders, within their school community, in their own territory, improves."

The representative from the Bahia State Department of Education, Professor Alexandre Guimarães, attending a national conference for the first time, believes in the potential of youth to improve planet Earth.

"Students aged 11 to 14 in Bahia were very engaged in all the projects developed in their schools. This gives us hope that this generational transition will happen and will be of high quality, guaranteeing the future of this planet that we love and care so much for," he said.

The mobilization for the conference reached 8.732 schools in 2.307 municipalities and brought together delegations from all 26 states and the Federal District.

On Wednesday (8), representatives of students from the 6th to 9th grade of elementary school from various parts of Brazil presented to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and ministers the Musical Letter Root that Blossoms, and delivered the preliminary version of the Commitment Letter of Children and Young People for the Future of the Planet, with the pact of the new generations for the construction of a sustainable and supportive society. 

The final version of the letter will be taken by the Brazilian government to COP30 [Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change], in Belém, starting on November 10th, as a way to recognize the leading role of young people in raising awareness and addressing climate change.