Ghana’s lead, pro-Youth Charity, Young Professionals and Youth Coalition, YPYC, joins the comity of nations in a concerted campaign to roll back the pervasive effects of climate change on humanity and livelihoods.

A press statement issued in Accra on the one-day, high-level youth conference on the theme: “Assessment of youth empowerment in addressing the climate crisis” charged the youth to increase climate activism in furtherance of achieving the objectives of the global twenty-eighth “Conference of the Parties” COP 28, expected to unite nations, experts and stakeholders on the 2023 climate action themed, “food systems resilience.”

YPYC Founder and President, Andy Osei Okrah, in a signed statement ahead of the Monday, November 27 virtual conference, said diverse initiatives have been triggered locally to feed into the global challenge to strengthen youth participation in climate change programs.

Behavioral change, the statement said, holds the key to positioning the youth, as owners with a greater stake in the fortunes of the environment in the distant future, to join global initiatives in restoring the ecology to its former self.

Conference host Andy Okrah, told the media in Accra that student leaders, tertiary students, young professionals, youth and climate change advocates and ambassadors, who make-up the target group, should constitute themselves into brand ambassadors of climate change content, for the good of humanity.

Summit speakers, including, but not limited to Miss Roselyn Fosuah Adjei, Director of Climate Change, Forestry Commission, Professor Daniel Ofori, Director, Forest Research Institute of Ghana of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and Miss Dora Cudjoe, lead stakeholder engagement, CIF, USA, would navigate the delicate balance of achieving a healthy, regulated climate and the ever-increasing human reliance on same for research, industrial growth and technological advances.

“We need collective mobilization to bring issues of the environment to the front burner, to let same feature prominently on the table of officialdom in tandem with political success and economic prosperity, which predominantly, has been the priority of the political class.” Osei Okrah declared.

He added, “Stopping global warming is an inherently global goal since greenhouse gasses emitted anywhere, affect people everywhere, and the survival or otherwise of one, is inextricably indexed to the other.”

The statement called for a fair and inclusive decision-making process in a bid to thread down the wave of increased heat and drought in parts of the world.

The single biggest health threat facing humanity including air quality, disease, extreme weather events, forced displacement, increased hunger and poor nutrition could be reversed with the active inclusion of the youth, the statement ended.