Welcome to the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC)'s Youth Advisory Panel (YAP)'s blog. The DECC YAP is a group of young people aged between 15 and 25 from all over the UK, with a wide-range of backgrounds, from academia to activism.

Our aim is to inform everyone and anyone about DECC's activities and likewise to help DECC understand and take into account the concerns of young people. We are a medium of consultancy and conversation. Much of our work looks at finding a 'Pathway to 2050', reviewing how energy with be supplied and used in the next four decades, so follow us and join us on the journey!

Monday 18 July 2011

Scottish National Discussion Days


In early July as part of the Scottish Government National discussion days 'Low Carbon Scotland' campaign- YoungScots hosted a collaborative event with different youth groups from around Scotland. I was honoured to be asked to co-host this event; as a Department of Energy and Climate Change Youth Advisory Panelist and as UKYCC Government Liaison for Scotland.
By morning the new Scottish Minister for Climate Change, Stuart Stevenson joined in on the discussion. He genuinely open armed the youth perspective reiterating a need for a long term strategy for tackling Climate Change that exceeds beyond a short term governmental lifespan. A strategy that can only logically be youth led.
The Local Investigation Teams represent urban, semi-urban and rural regions of Scotland and have been looking at different elements within Climate Change.
The teams came from Balfron High School, Rathbone Training and Lochgilphead Joint Campus and all used film to communicate the impact of Climate Change on their local communities. I was astounded by the end product from all those involved and the creativeness used to portray their individual messages.

The afternoon took on another flavour and while the expert panel; Minister Stewart Stevenson, Fiona Page, Catriona Chalmers, Angus Duncan and Ian Williams gave critique the highlight for me was the roundtable discussions. There was mixed opinion between the groups. The discussions, I believe, even started to make the pessimists consider their own energy use The day ended with ‘Top 3 Action Points’ in relation to what they the teams could do to tackle Climate Change, and what barriers they might face in doing this.
The teams cast votes throughout the day sharing their opinion on Climate Change and the results alongside the Scottish Government survey will be available in August this year.

Grabbing the Ministers attention is only half the battle. If we truly want to meet our Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 then we need to align and unite all young people.
This YoungScot event stood testament to this. The event kept young people at the heart of the debate with young representation on the expert panel, young presenters and creatively capturing the top actions of the day by cartoon.
The messages were relevant and this simplicity opened up Climate Change to a wider young audience.


If you would like to know more about YoungScot please follow link to their website http://www.youngscot.org/
If you would like to know more about Graeme's wonderful cartoons http://www.ogilviedesign.co.uk

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