Not much more than a year ago, a chance meeting at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík, Iceland sparked what is now becoming a practical solution to our climate crisis: the global Arctic Youth Network (AYN). Initially called the super mega plan, half-jokingly but still quite serious, the AYN resulted from the discussion of youth from Iceland, Alaska and

Singapore. Namely members of the Icelandic Youth Environmentalist Association, the Alaska based Arctic Youth Ambassadors and a youth representative of Singapore. All agreed that each community had limited knowledge or insight into sustainable development in each other‘s regions, let alone the rest of the world. This observation was combined with the heightened urgency of climate action for the Arctic, which will experience warming of 4–5°C if the global climate warms by 2°C on average. In fact, it was reported at the COP24 that Alaska has already experienced warming of 3°C and communities have for some time been in need of relocation due to thawing of permafrost, lack of sea ice and accompanying land

erosion.

But what is the AYN, really? The global Arctic Youth Network is a platform for the youth of any region any culture of the world to discuss and collaborate on sustainability, focusing on how climate change, biodiversity, and cultural equality are interconnected and should be approached as one whole. The AYN is of course not limited to these three key issues, but rather uses them as a means to focus our efforts in relation to sustainable development as a whole.

This approach has two main benefits:

It enables us to achieve greater results through the synergy of addressing more than one issue at a time. 2. engages more people since these three key issues combined relate to a much broader group than climate change alone. This means that coordinating efforts towards sustainable development becomes much easier, which is obviously necessary given the fact that our current Paris rulebook falls short of our 1.5°C limit of global warming.

The most common question at this point is twofold: what do you mean by cultural equality and how exactly are these things interconnected? A perfect example is the previously mentioned warming climate of Alaska and the resulting need for the relocation of communities. To begin with, the cultures of Alaskan Native communities are among those affected most by the climate crisis despite having taken a marginal part, if any, in causing the problem. Despite this, they have not received the necessary support from cultures spearheading the causes of climate change, who have effectively externalized the real costs of the fossil fuel economy. With this perspective in mind, we can now just begin to address the real issues of climate change, since the problem is much deeper than simple measurements of CO2. And more importantly, we can address these issues much more efficiently by implementing traditional indigenous knowledge in government and international policy.

But is the AYN only about the Arctic? Despite the AYN‘s origin in the Arctic, it is a fact that sustainable development is a global issue and nothing that happens in the Arctic really stays in the Arctic. As a clear example, the melting glaciers in the Arctic are flooding homes in the southern hemisphere, and as a reference to biodiversity, we have migratory birds flying every year between the Arctic and Antarctica. Furthermore, the concept of cultural equality has no geographical boundaries in our global society.

Despite receiving the AYN name as late as January 2018, replacing the initial name of, super mega plan“, it has already become a community of over 100 youth in 27 countries, who have all committed their time to the network. While being still in its early stages of development, with a website scheduled for mid/late 2019, you can already follow us on Instagram and learn more by viewing our COP24 panel, on Youtube, which elaborates further on the concept. Are you doing something similar? Let us know so we can collaborate!