Saudi Arabia, please sign the Declaration on Children, Youth and Climate Action now!

As Earth goes into climate emergency whilst we embark on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Regeneration to resuscitate her, it is ever more urgent and more critical for "...the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it", to be united and inclusive to avoid intragenerational confrontations.

Therefore it is imperative for those in power to recognise and mobilise the enormous capacity of children and youth to be mighty agents of change by consistently considering the latter’s specific needs, rights and perspectives in climate policies and action at all levels.

The Declaration represents an opportunity for UN member states which are not yet signatories to commit to the adoption of a comprehensive framework to rectify the widespread omission of children and youth from climate policies, strategies and plans across different tiers of government.

Furthermore, signing the Declaration would not be yet another futile act of paying lip service to the rhetoric of putting children and youth at the heart of climate action and of investing in practical solutions that protect them from the effects of climate change. Rather, adopting the Declaration would provide a strong legal foundation for children and youth to initiate court actions if required to challenge any dereliction of duties by governments in their decision-making process to uphold their pledge to implement the Declaration.

In short, by signing the Declaration, UN member states will transform children and youth from toothless tigers with no voting right to vigorous watchkeepers with teeth to hold governments accountable to their commitments. This powerful legal implication may well be a major reason for governments’ hesitation in making the Declaration.

Therefore, please sign this petition to press your national government to sign the Declaration now! We are all children and youth once with plenty of passion and ideals to offer for a better world with a brighter future. Let children and youth be empowered to contribute alongside their seniors in humanity’s rescue of Earth.

We have already squandered 30 years, there is simply no more time for mankind to be divided and conquered by this climate emergency due to finger-pointing and infighting between younger and older members of this last generation who can ensure the survival of our future generations.

“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation” to quote Mahatma Gandhi. Please sign this petition as your personal testimony of operationalising this beautiful saying by Gandhi. The Declaration is available at UNICEF’s webpage with the URL of https://www.unicef.org/environment-and-climate-change/climate-declaration#signatories for your reference.

Signing this petition is only the first step in this campaign. The next step is to invite members of your personal network to sign this petition. The final step is to invite your electoral representatives and leaders of your local governments, to sign this petition. The objective of this campaign is to focus first on securing all G20 countries as signatories to create a ripple effect so that eventually all UN member states will sign the Declaration by the end of 2022.

Please feel free to start an online petition for each of the non-G20 countries which have not signed the Declaration. The photo used for this online petition can be downloaded at https://bit.ly/DTSEPetitionPhoto for your online petition campaign.

Lastly, Diet to Save Earth invites you to also sign the open letter of YOUNGO (the Youth Constituency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), which calls for the adoption of the Declaration, at Children’s Environmental Rights Initiative’s webpage with the URL of https://www.childrenvironment.org/sign-declaration.

Thank you for your support of this campaign.

Let’s put our Earth where our mouth is!