CAST Director Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE stars in the ActNowFilm premiering at COP28 as one of 30 climate experts from across the world in conversation with youth climate leaders calling for young people to be at the frontline of global climate policymaking and negotiations.
The ‘ActNowFilm: youth climate leaders in conversation with climate experts’ is a short film featuring candid 1-2-1 conversations about the state of the climate crisis between 30 pairs of youth climate leaders and climate experts from 33 countries, including our CAST Director Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE who was matched with Yolanda Waters, an environmental and marine social scientist from Australia and community coordinator for Divers for Climate.
In the film, produced by the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research (IPR) and Cambridge Zero, youth climate leaders share their personal experiences of the devastating effects of climate change, expressing frustration over the slow pace of action to address it. With globally influential experts, they map out the crucial role that young people can and should play in the fight against climate change, including as part of the national teams negotiating the planet’s future at COP.
The film highlights the value, place and importance of young people in the urgent national and global climate debates and negotiations, and acts as a clarion call for the formal integration of young people into these processes. It also serves as a call to further empower young people to contribute to national and global climate policymaking by providing them with the relevant skills, tools and opportunities.
Among many other issues, the conversation between Lorraine and Yolanda focused on effective communication for behaviour change, how local grassroots level action provides hope for tackling climate change in light of growing frustration with the slow-moving COP process, the need to redefine who is an ‘expert’, and the key role of young people in climate action.
Young people, Lorraine remarked, are disproportionally affected by climate change and have a much bigger stake in making sure we tackle it effectively. They can also offer fresh perspectives and are often uniquely placed to answer challenging questions surrounding the climate crisis that get us to think in different ways.
Our CAST Director Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE, ActNowFilm participant, shares her final thoughts on the film’s release at COP28:
“The #ActNowFilm highlights young people’s worries about climate change, the action they are taking, and problems with the COP process.
There is a need for a more substantive youth voice in climate negotiations, but also providing skills and resources to equip young people to be effective in these processes, since it’s young people who will have to live with the decisions made at COP.”
The ‘ActNowFilm: youth climate leaders in conversation with climate experts’, premiered at COP28 in the Green Zone on Friday 8 December.
To find out more about the project, watch the film on YouTube, watch the trailer and read the University of Bath’s press release.
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