Equipping Environmental Youth Leaders to Transform Eco-Anxiety (Part 1)
The Mekong River Basin is at high risk of environmental conflict and suffering from the negative impact of climate change. This is because a huge proportion of the population of 65 million people and economic activities rely on limited natural and water resources from the area.
In some parts of the Mekong River Basin, young people live with insecurity and fear daily due to frequent flooding episodes and water insecurity because of environmental disasters. Youths are also routinely denied opportunities to participate in and lead environmental peacebuilding activities due to a lack of support from adults. Therefore, engaging youth to promote psychological well-being from environmental impacts has significant implications for the peacebuilding of Mekong communities.
The project aims to foster collaboration across countries of the Greater Mekong by initiating an "Eco-Charge Camp." At this Camp, youth leaders will have the tools and resources to transform eco-anxiety into eco-community through various skills. These skills include leadership, adaptability, and project management. In addition, youth leaders will also strengthen their psychological resilience and climate action in the process.
The project builds on the importance and designs of climate cafes. The latter is founded on the idea that action on climate change will increase as more people from various backgrounds, environmental involvement, or geographic locations talk about climate change and discuss questions, concerns, and hopes. As such, the Eco-Charge Camp will focus on the vulnerabilities in the Mekong River while building the capacity of environmental youth leaders and promoting cohesion and problem solving across countries.
Equipping Environmental Youth Leaders to Transform Eco-Anxiety (Part 2)
Visit the project's official YouTube channel.
Starting in 2020, Fellows of the Asia Peace Innovators Forum formed several small teams as they discovered common interests and shared challenges. These teams then concentrated their efforts on designing a potential solution to a challenge they face in their professional or personal lives. Having refined these solution ideas with their colleagues in the Network and several external resource specialists, Salzburg Global is supporting select teams to take their project ideas to key stakeholders who can help make them a reality.
If you are interested in working with this project group in any way, please email Jennifer Dunn (jdunn@SalzburgGlobal.org) with your statement of interest.