YOU STOP, YOU CHANGE, YOU IMPLEMENT, YOU ENCOURAGE, YOU-TH #goSustainable

The Youth’s Environmental Dystopia: A Glimpse into 2050

When I picture my life in 2050 and that of other 18-year-olds of today, I feel suffocated breathing the air thick with pollution that is projected to become the top cause of environmentally-related deaths worldwide. I feel the global warming of the increased 1.5 degrees and the frequent heatstroke that would impede work outdoors, just 17 years from now. I feel the chemicals and debris in drinking water that would affect our health. I see declining and insufficient food production due to increasing temperature and increased population. I see global environmental extremes, global water scarcity, global waste management issues, and global glacier loss. But what I don’t see are butterflies fluttering through my garden.

But what I don’t see are butterflies fluttering through my garden.

What is the ‘root cause’ of our environmental troubles?

These are scanty visuals of the abrupt and irreversible outcome of the ‘three planetary crises’ – climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution – in our not-too-distant future that scientists have anticipated; alarmingly however, these consequences are now on the horizon and the youth and children are most at stake. We must remember, our lives and the lives of future generations depend on the environment. What is the ‘root cause’? It is our unsustainable consumption and production practice. Global consumption and production depend on the use of natural resources; however, we are over-consuming resources and energy and are over-generating wastes and pollutants. In today’s society, we extract, process, use, and dispose of an ever-intensifying quantity of resources from oils, gas, and minerals, to energy, food, and water for economic growth while harming the ecosystem and ironically, also our health. In 2050, if the global population reaches 9.8 billion, we will need 3 Earths to sustain our current resource usage. Our planet is running out of resources and our activities are crossing the capacity of the planet.

All of these can become the repercussion of our actions of today, and this is our call to action.

Call to Action: What do we do?

We, the youth, need to think of the future. To begin with, we need to reduce our consumption to sustain the livelihoods of current and future generations. We need to change our industries to design sustainable products and services. We need to become conscious customers and shift toward more fair, equitable, and sustainable buying patterns. We need to recycle, reuse, and limit waste. We need to find a balance between the three dimensions– economic, social, and environmental. As the future architects of development of this society, we need to design it to become a greener and more socially inclusive global ecology. And, we need to start now.

We need to start now.

Decoding SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production

This looming necessity to transform the predominant way in which our societies produce or consume goods and services is the focus of Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG12). It is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations in 2015 to serve as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future”. To understand how we can promote and implement SDG12, we first need to know what it envisions. SDG12, titled “responsible consumption and production”, envisions overcoming one of the greatest global challenges to tackle the effects of the “triple planetary crises”. That is, to integrate environmental sustainability with economic growth and human well-being. It designs to carry this out by ensuring good use of resources, minimising emissions of waste and pollutants, improving energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure, providing access to basic services, encouraging green entrepreneurship and generating decent jobs, and ensuring a better quality of life for all.

Actions for Youth: Advocate, Push for Action, Take Action

How can youth promote SDG12? (1) Advocate, (2) Push for Action, and (3) Take Action are the three lines of action through which we can. This necessitates a consciousness of SDG12’s targets, their unique challenges, and strategies to support them.

Target 12.1 aims to develop and implement a 10-year action plan in a country, but lack of clear steps for implementation and the little coordination among stakeholders are its delays. On that accord, the objective of Target 12.7 is to promote sustainable public procurement practices, whilst the fact that the entire production cycle needs to be measured for being sustainable is its struggle. Furthermore, Target 12.c resolves to rationalise fossil- fuel subsidies; however, countries face the issue of sustaining in the global economy and the current economic crises without them. Given these, we as youth can Push for Action from government agencies. At the same time, we can assist them by designing indicators to measure sustainability, and avoid fossil fuels or its subsidies.

We youth can Push for Action from the International Community to facilitate Targets 12.a and 12.b which desire to support developing countries’ technological capacity for sustainable consumption and production and to develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable tourism respectively. That said, the lack of global partnerships is a barrier. Nonetheless, as youth, we can imitate and implement developed countries’ technology, versus waiting for it. Concurrently, we can also advocate the UN World Tourism Organisation’s motto of “Take nothing back, and leave nothing behind” for sustainable tourism using campaigns, rallies and social media.

Advocate the UN World Tourism Organisation’s motto of “Take nothing back, and leave nothing behind”.

Target 12.6 encourages businesses to implement sustainable practices and inculcate sustainability metrics into their business reports; meanwhile, the deficit of incentives for the private sector is a roadblock. This target obliges us to Push for Action from Industry and Business, encouraging them to align with SDG12 targets and comply with corporate social responsibility. It is also crucial that initiatives, led by the national governments, focus on methods to imbed social and environmental costs into business law. Emission taxes, carbon taxes, and other regulatory incentives, for example, can be instituted. Simultaneously, we must also Take Action. We can or aspire to become green entrepreneurs. Green entrepreneurship focuses on innovating greener processes of production and designs low-carbon products and services, contributing as well to new markets, decent jobs and fair trade.

Target 12.8 seeks to increase global awareness of sustainable lifestyles, the formidable task here is to persuade individuals and build widespread awareness channels. As youth, we can be the change. You can change your lifestyle. Change our code, alongside ‘go green’, ‘go electric’ and ‘go vegan’; we can create our unique motto like: ‘#goSustainable’, ‘#goZeroWastage’ and ‘#goSDG12’. Create your unique action plan in your environment and endorse this sustainability motto for others to follow. To add to this, Target 12.2 plans to reduce material consumption and material footprint for efficient use of resources. Its two primary challenges are the reluctance for corporate-consumer responsibility, as well as the vitality to construct a global value chain. We Push for Action from global organisations on the development of a global value chain in order to minimise the raw materials extraction and to reinvent existing products. Similarly, Target 12.3 strives to halve food wastage and reduce food loss, then again, awareness of sustainability and of SDGs among consumers and a business (particularly SMEs) is restricted. Significantly, we can stop unsustainable practices in our environment. Become conscious consumers, makes purchasing decisions with a positive social, economic, and environmental impact. Stop using unsustainable goods with high material footprint, high food loss or low management of waste and chemicals. Choose businesses that care about things like their food loss index and carbon emission. Change your food wastage amount, reduce. Avoid plastic-packaging, buy in loose. This will persuade companies to cater to your demands to ‘go sustainable’. Advocate ‘conscious consumerism’ around you.

As youth, we can be the change.

You can change your lifestyle. Change our code, alongside ‘go green’, ‘go electric’ and ‘go vegan’; we can create our unique motto like: ‘#goSustainable’, ‘#goZeroWastage’ and ‘#goSDG12’.

Advocate ‘conscious consumerism’ around you.

On that note, Targets 12.4 and 12.5 address responsible chemical and waste management and waste reduction, correspondingly. Their hurdles, waywardly, are the lack of waste management protocol, lack of coordinated response across government levels and the lack of awareness. We as youth can change our waste management techniques, separate compostable wastes. Try to reuse non-biodegradable wastes by developing a value chain at home. Encourage government to enforce waste management mechanism and increase cooperation over all government levels. Measure your progress with indicators such as your material-use index or your food-wastage index or renewable-energy-use index. Reduce, reuse or recycle your hazardous wastes. This way, we can also Advocate for other to follow.

The obstacles of implementing SDG12 are multi-dimensional, ranging from fostering global collaboration to combating economic crises, raising awareness and changing ideologies, channelling human resources, and, perhaps most crucially, monitoring, reporting and evaluating the progress of SDG12. Evidently however, making it a reality is our necessity and responsibility. We possess the strength of 1.8 billion individual aged 10-24—the largest generation of youth in history. Interconnected to each other like never before, we want to and are already contributing to the adaptability of our communities. Nonetheless, we still need stronger changes and for that we need to advocate, push for action and take action. We are the future and we must carry and vouch for the sustainability agenda in our respective professions. You begin with you, you stop unsustainable products and services, you change your lifestyle. you implement a sustainability motto, you encourage people, industries and governments. Declare yourself, “I am sustainable”.

Declare yourself, “I am sustainable”.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Gandhiji