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Pupils from 49 schools across Wales will today have the chance to debate the impacts and actions needed to tackle climate change ahead of the United Nations COP21 conference in Paris next month.

The objective of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP 21) is to achieve a binding and global agreement to address climate change.

The National Eco committee meeting will see 49 of Wales’s platinum Eco-schools mirror the COP21 conference at simultaneous meetings in Ruthin, Carmarthenshire and Cilfynydd.  

The meetings will enable the young people involved to learn more about the implications of climate change, COP21 and its importance globally and to Wales’ future.

The meetings will feature Wales’s track record of positive international action through the Welsh Government’s Wales for Africa Programme and the links to Lesotho and the Mbale Partnership working with the charity Size of Wales.

As part of the event, the children and young people will develop messages for the Natural Resources Minister to take with him to the negotiations in Paris and identify practical actions to help tackle climate change in their schools and their local communities.

Carl Sargeant said:

“As we have done in Wales through the Well-being of Future Generations Act, the United Nations recently took the game-changing step of adopting a set of 17 Goals that are a blueprint for a better future.  

“In doing so, the UN also underlined that one of the top three global challenges we must address is to solve climate change and I am therefore hopeful that COP21 will be a further step forward which will accelerate action through a global agreement.

“Today’s events give our young people the opportunity to have their voices heard on an issue that is one of the most significant for their future.  

“In representing Wales at the Paris Summit, I will be taking forward their messages to COP and highlighting the work we are doing through for example our legislation which strengthens our commitment to tackle climate change and places sustainability at the heart of everything we do.”

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