On October 15, I had the opportunity to present the youth agenda at the CARICOM Preparatory Meeting heading into the 26th Conference of Parties. My focus was on loss and damage mechanisms for Small Island Developing States that are a few disasters away from socio-economic and environmental upheaval.

Here are my words:
“Good morning, Secretary-General Dr. Carla Barnett, Honorable Ministers, your excellencies and distinguished guests. It is indeed my pleasure to be here to address you at this preparatory meeting to cement our agenda as a block of Small Island Developing States who, by all accounts, are disproportionately and adversely affected by this climate emergency of the Anthropocene. More than ever, we continue to be aware of our lived reality, which is that we continue to be at the forefront of a war that we did not start.

Madam Secretary General, before I go into my substantive presentation, I must congratulate you on your appointment, as the first woman to ever hold the office of CARICOM Secretary General and the first from our home country, Belize. By that very achievement, you have inspired the young girls in Belize and across the Region to know that they too can dream infinite dreams and achieve them, if they remain dedicated to the cause.

I am of course here to say to you what young people have said as a group from a regional standpoint. What we have said at ECOSOC, what we have said at UNCTAD, and what we have said at Youth4Climate Summits. Before the title of youth ambassador, I consider myself a creative, and so the only slide that you will be seeing today, as at this juncture you have seen many, will be of a picture taken by a young photographer, Kevin Roches, on the beaches of Hopkins Village in southern Belize. It is of a grandfather and his grandchild enjoying the beach, one of the most quaint and beautiful stills of the livelihood that Caribbean people enjoy today and have enjoyed for decades as we moved from objects to subjects of our political destinies. It is the poetry of Derrick Walcott, of Mutabaruka, of Amilcar Sanatan, of Bob Marley.

In June, at ECOSOC we asked for space where bureaucratic and financial barriers would be removed so that we may contribute to decisions that concern our future. We asked for the continued support for innovative and sustainable solutions so that young entrepreneurs may thrive in this fourth industrial revolution of digitization. In September at UNCTAD, we asked for Green Fiscal Policy in a phased manner by linking government expenditures with environmental goals and for creating a policy space for green investment. We also asked that indigenous people be involved in a concerted gender-responsive approach, operationalizing SDGs 5, 10, 12 and 13 in such a way that would promote and invest in their unique sustainable practices aimed at ecosystem preservation. The Caribbean Consortium of Youth Organizations in August of this year issued a call which we have all heard echoed in our vernacular from rostrum speech to Calypso, 1.5 to Stay Alive. We recited an eerie poem we heard time and time again, extreme weather events, high sea levels, increased temperatures; we got the bad end of the stick. In Milan, we talked about driving ambition, sustainable recoveries, non-state engagement and building a climate-conscious society. I can with certainty say that the CARICOM Youth Development Goals and even our national youth policies contain some iteration of these words that seek to mainstream youth and environmental policy action.

Honorable ministers, the point is this: we have the idea, behind that idea we must put the weight of intergenerational collaboration. We stress that there must be and will be a relentless demand that the youth constituency be made a meaningful partner in the management of the processes associated with addressing the climate emergency. These youth events and outcome documents are not “practice rounds”. As indigenous activist, Ruth Miller mentions, young people are the engineers, architects, scientists, community organizers fueling the future — to ignore our input is at your own peril. We must be meaningfully included, be given a fair chance at building our capacities to do the work and have access to funds to get the work done, because as we know, financial flows steer the direction of societal dynamics and climate adaptation. We expect that the actions outlined in the Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition outcomes be central features of the discussions you lead. You carry with you a future that is as much yours as it is ours. While mitigation and adaptation have their place, the space for true resilience can only be comprehensively created by accelerating our charge for loss and damage mechanisms that are not loan-laden but grant abundant. We ask that when this barrier is broken, that the finance generated is equitably distributed among our nations and used for what it was recovered for, to ensure that there are nations that we can always call home and an earth where humanity survives and thrives. This is what resilience means.

Reparations for the climate injustices must be the premise on which you enter COP26. We have lost enough as a people throughout our history and cannot afford to lose any more. As I end, I parrot the words of activist Vanessa Nakate: “We cannot adapt to lost cultures, we cannot adapt to lost tradition, we cannot adapt to lost history.” I want, as I’m sure other young Caribbean people want, for the sweet child pictured in the photo to be able to enjoy clean beaches and crisp breeze with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Even beyond COP26, be guided by science, but be guided by your humanity which connects us all.

I encourage you all to have a look at Caribbean Youth’s Stay Alive and Thrive Petition headed into this 26th COP at www.stayaliveandthrive.org, which supports these aspirations.

Thank you for your time, and best wishes in the plenary.”