COY8 Green Economy Workshop: The Green Economy Blueprint in Young People's Vision

2012/11/24 Qatar time 12:30-13:30

The Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition (TWYCC) held three workshops on different topics at the United Nations Climate Change Youth Conference, namely:
1. Crisis of the Island
2. Can we stand for climate refugee?
3. Build and Grow a Grassroots Organization.

Among them, Crisis of the Island used a fictional story to give participants a preliminary understanding of what the crises on the island are. (Nuclear power crisis, renewable energy demand, water use efficiency, environmental education, living conditions, business environment) It sought to guide participants to think about climate change and environmental sustainability from different angles and dimensions, and used a brief five minutes to introduce the ideal concepts of the green economy and shared value, prompting the participating youth to reflect on and examine the policies they had previously known from the public and private sectors. Finally, all participating youth were divided into different sectors (consumers, enterprises, academic institutions, NGOs and government), each playing a different role, to formulate short- and long-term strategies and express possible cooperation with other organizations and suggestions, so as to achieve the ideal of a green economy and a sustainable environment.

Within just 15 minutes, it was quite difficult to create a win-win economic situation through the aforementioned "Create Shared Value" strategic management mindset, but the youth still worked hard to discuss and plan toward the ideal goal of a green economy (in which Environment, Economy and Social are all given equal weight).

The Arab youth representative serving in the NGO role mentioned that in the short term, the role of NGOs is not merely to take to the streets waving flags and shouting, and to carry out actions that cannot clearly express their demands, but rather to use the Internet and social media to build interpersonal networks and reach deep into various target groups (e.x. student groups) to raise green awareness, so that in the medium term training can be conducted to enable them to understand green issues more deeply and combine this with their own experience and expertise, and in the long term everyone can have the ability to urge and supervise and lobby government agencies as well as influence more people.

As for enterprises, the Singaporean youth mentioned that in addition to continuously carrying out green transformation within the industry in the short term, the long-term direction of corporate strategy should not only be to educate consumers, but to truly see consumers' deeper needs, and then develop green products and services to solve the problems they care about, so as to expand demand, and use energy-saving technology to reduce costs and carbon emissions, promoting from the most fundamental level a green economic entity full of incentives and appeal, rather than unrealistic "greenwashing" strategies.

Even the American youth serving in the consumer role said: even though green consumption awareness has already formed, there is a lack of practical incentives to carry out green consumption (product prices are higher than other non-green products), and this aspect is the possibility of cooperation among corporate strategy, the consumer market and government policy. It is hoped that perhaps through trilateral cooperation, ideal living conditions and a more advanced consumption philosophy can be achieved.

(Image: Green Economy Workshop)

During the process, quite a few youths also doubted whether this fictional island story was meant to refer to Taiwan, China, and even mentioned considerations of political factors. But as youth, what we possess is an endless stream of innovation and a flexible way of thinking, and if we are constrained in the dimensions of our thinking by many other factors, we will stand still. Therefore, my answer is: this is indeed a fictional island kingdom, and through the proposals and transformations of the youth, it will also be a utopia that leads the youth toward their ideals.

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