Nico's Natural World

By Nico Roman (Oct 2023)

Hello and thank you very much.

It’s brilliant to be able to join you today online, for your International School in Lund’s event on Recognizing Children’s Rights to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, standing up for our present – and for our future!

As you know, I volunteer as a UN Child Ambassador for the SDGs with the Voices of Future Generations Children’s Initiative. As part of this commitment, I edit an online blog – Nico’s Natural World – with over 9000 impressions, and hundreds of followers.

Together, we stand for our children’s rights – as reflected in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, especially Articles 24 and 29 that promise us a healthy environment and education about nature, and also Articles 12 to 13 that guarantee us a voice in decisions that concern us.

Our future, and the futures of all species on Earth, concern us!

They really do!

I might be only a child, but I know that advancing the world’s SDGs, especially SDG 13 on Climate Action and SDG 15 to Protect Life on Land, makes the difference between a terrible global nightmare, and the future we want.

We are speaking out to ask everyone to wake up.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are real, dangerous and urgent.

Even in Cambridge where I live there has been massive flooding, with loss and damage, due to the terrible impacts of a storm that recently passed through. It was even worse in Scotland where sadly several people lost their lives.

We live in a climate emergency, with wildfires, droughts and heat waves rising, while extreme storms and flooding increase, hurting the most vulnerable among us like children and the elderly, first. And it will get worse if we can’t all work together, rather than continuing all the harmful practices!

We also live in a biodiversity emergency, with thousands of species already lost, and many more at risk of going extinct forever, unless we can all help to protect nature recovery!

We can also each do something to help, ourselves, even as children. Really we can.

As one example, rather than staying scared, sad and angry, I decided to kayak 67 kilometers from Cambridge where we all live along the Cam and Great Ouse Rivers to the sea.

Together, we were raising awareness and funds for local and global charities who are trying to protect children’s rights and nature from the horrific, frightening impacts of climate change. 😊

All funds we raised went directly to the Voices of Future Generations Children’s Initiative and others.

Having volunteered for years with Voices, helping young people around the world speak out, standing up for their rights and for nature, we know they’re terrific.

We also supported local charities Wicken Fen and the Cambridge University Botanic Garden who are working to protect our fenlands from terrible climate change impacts, and to promote education about sustainability solutions.

Direct action in our communities and raising funds to protect children and nature from climate change are very inspiring. They only a start, though.

As children, we are also trying very hard to be heard, locally and globally, to stop the suffering and losses from getting even worse.

We must make sure our leaders tackle the climate and biodiversity crises with strength and unity, and learn how to protect and include everyone, especially indigenous voices. We can’t just ignore problems until everything is just too late!

Our rights are being directly infringed by current policies, laws and decisions – locally, nationally and internationally.

We need new guardian laws, institutions and networks.

The world needs to take children’s fears and interests much more seriously, and especially, needs all of us to be able to work together as children, and to respect and listen to indigenous children, and youth too.

As children we have a duty to speak up and force our leaders to take action against climate change and environmental troubles.

If we want to make a difference, we must scale up our understanding, our education and our voices!

As one other example, which maybe is interesting to you in this event…

Earlier this year my friend Wezi from Zambia and I wrote a submission for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child General Comment 26, about climate justice, and the rights of children in times of climate change.

We studied the science, the law and the politics, becoming very, very worried. We focused on the links between climate change and…

our rights as children to education in General Comment 26 para 49,

our right to non-discrimination in GC26 para 50-51,

our rights as children to be heard in GC26 para 56-58, and

our right to freedom of expression para 59-61.

We also commented on access to justice and remedies for children in relation to climate change (paras 62-70), and of course

our right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (para 71-74).

For instance, we argued that:

“action needs to be taken immediately on all fronts to protect and realise [the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment] for children.

We understand that you might need to ask to ‘phase out’ fossil fuels (para 73 d), but many of us who are climate-strikers feel very, very strongly that it is already nearly too late, and all fossil fuels need to be banned as soon as possible. It is crazy that current generations of adult are still allowing our energy to be coming from non-renewable sources that poison our Earth, and this has to change immediately.”

We also argued about the need to protect biodiversity, all of nature, not just children, from the impacts of climate change.

As good news, our advice was picked up by the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, Professor David Boyd, and we actually managed to change the Commentary!

They took into account our views about the global Biodiversity Emergency, globally, which we argued “is just as serious and equally terrible, impacting millions of species that our generation, and all future generations, might lose forever, and never even know about.”

We told them: “You do mention that climate change is devastating biodiversity, and you mention the rising problems of biodiversity loss and destruction of nature… but we believe that you should recognize the need for urgent action to protect nature and biodiversity in the interests of current and future generations. You can refer to some of the commitments agreed in Montreal during the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP15, especially the important promises in the Global Biodiversity Framework to look for ‘nature-positive’ solutions to climate change and biodiversity emergencies, and to protect much more of land and sea for current and future generations.”

They listened, and the need to protect biodiversity is now highlighted more than 14 times in the General Comment 26 of the United Nations, which is guiding countries and other people all over the world in their work to fight climate change and respect the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

To conclude: basically, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child promises us a healthy environment and this right means that willful destruction of natural habitats, without any regard for the plants and animals, nor for all future generations… just needs to stop.

And – even the smallest child CAN make a BIG difference, towards a more sustainable world for us all.

Thank you!

Also, check out this article Nurturing Future Generations: Celebrating United Nations Day