Student Speaker: Liam O’Doherty

The primary goal of this project was to allow students to share and discuss the impacts, lessons, and experiences of climate change in their homes, local communities, and urban centres; and then relay the ways in which they are uniquely adapting and responding to these challenges. After engaging in global conversations, the youth participants identified various risks and vulnerabilities they face, commonalities and differences, and established a framework of meaningful priorities, policies, and calls to action for systemic initiatives in addressing climate change, with a particular lens to education, educational frameworks, and the opportunities and challenges therein. As a result of this three-month, intensive partnership, an international delegation of youth from the participating cities met in Edmonton, and between February 28 - March 5, 2018, they produced a ‘Whitepaper on Climate Change,’ which will be presented in this conference session. Following introduction and the Whitepaper presentation, we will engage session participants in a ‘World Café’ to cultivate deep, rich conversations around issues that genuinely matter to a community of scholars sharing similar interest and passion.