Shanisse (Singapore) and Sagar (Nepal) Visiting Bavaria

Shanisse (14) from Singapore, the new world president of the children’s global committee, and Sagar (16) from Nepal, the new global president of the youth committee, spent one week at the Plant-for-the-Planet office in Tutzing from June 3 on. There they discussed the strategy with Felix.

For her term Shanisse planned the following: 5 million people live in Singapore. Since everybody has to plant 150 trees this equals 750 million. I will try that the people in Singapore start a campaign of one billion trees. Singapore is only 20 by 30 km in surface, but we can plant the trees in neighboring countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. These countries are poorer than our country and have much more space.

In Singapore there was already an academy and lectures by Felix in front of 1,000 students in January. I will put together a team and we will start academies in our neighbor countries, first in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand If these ambassadors hold further academies, it should be possible that at the end of my term there will be several thousand new ambassadors for climate justice.

At this moment we believe that the most important job is to strengthen the social network in order to ensure that we reach as many people as possible. This means among others to design the current website in a more personal way for all those who take part in Plant-for-the-Planet. This can happen for example through blogs and bulletin boards. We also want to develop online academies to reach the children who live in areas where there are no academies. We also wish to create a viral video so we can get even more attention especially from the youth. Besides we want to collect statements by celebrities in order to turn the fans of them into supporters in our social networks.

The following are Sagar’s plans for his presidency:
Nearly 30 million people live in Nepal. In the past 22 years we have lost around a quarter of our forest. First I will find out how many trees we can still plant in Nepal and then will ask for an interview with the president of Nepal. I will ask our president to become patron of Plant-for-the-Planet in Nepal and to start a campaign together and call on people to plant trees.

The most important part of the campaign will be the academies which we will start in Nepal with my team. These will be academies for children (8-14) for ambassadors of climate justice and for youth (15-21) of future lobbyists. With the office in Tutzing we will found a legally independent Plant-for-the-Planet organization in Nepal which will remain active even after my term.

Shanisse and me have considered in theory how a partnership of our 3 point plan between a rich country like Singapore (with a gross domestic product of 37,300 US$ per inhabitant on the 20th place worldwide) and a poor country like Nepal (460 US$ and on 164th place worldwide) could look like:

On average the 5 million inhabitants of Singapore emit 6 to CO2 per year, which equals in total 30 million to C02 per year. The 30 million inhabitants of Nepal emit 0.26 to C02 per year, which equals in total 7.8 million to C02 per year. If both our presidents, I’m not speaking of Shanisse and me, but the prime minister of Nepal, Baburam Bhattarai and the head of government of Singapore, Lee HsienLoong, start a partnership, the 35 million inhabitants of both our countries together would only emit 37.8 million to or 1.08 to C02 per year and person. If the people in Singapore finance the technology for us in Nepal so we can reach more prosperity without making the same mistakes as they did, if we can switch from bicycle directly to electric car, without combustion engine, with the help from Singapore, then both our countries together could stay under the 1.5 to CO2 emission per person, which we demand. If the world is not able to cooperate then maybe two countries have to start showing that solidarity works.

And if the sea level rises we invite you all to Nepal. Our highest elevation is 8.848 high.

With my friends in Nepal I will try to help with our Drupal website in order to reach what Shanisse suggested.

Of course we had the opportunity to get to know the area and we had lots of fun. As you can see here.