Plant-for-the-Planet Youth Summit 2015

The international Plant-for-the-Planet Youth Summit at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing has started on 20th May with 88 participants from 23 different countries.

The Youth Summit kicked off with a Press Conference at the „Presse Club München“. The statements to the press were these:
 

• We call to start the greatest afforestation project  in the history of humankind because
  3 billion youths on this planet worry about their future
• We managed to plant 14 billion trees in eight years. It is our aim to plant 1000 billion trees in order to sequester 25% of man-made CO2 and thus ensure our survival.
•  We are therefore calling global players, industries and rich people all over the world to join the project.
• We need a global energy revolution because this will mean access to clean energy for everybody and therefore a just spread of prosperity
• We managed to fly to the moon in just over ten years. So if we consider ourselves a world family, we should definitely be able to find 986 people, companies and industries that each promise to plant 1 billion trees over the next years
• Remember the story about the mosquitos and the rhinoceros – one little mosquito can’t do anything, but a thousand mosquitos can force a rhino to change direction          
• We do not want to be known in due course as the generation that destroyed the planet. We want to be known as the generation that found a solution for the biggest challenge mankind has ever faced – our own survival.
• It is crazy that we are burning oil (or using it for our cars), oil that we need for us and our children in the future for life-saving medicine etc.
• We can use solar energy to desalinate water and for our afforestation projects
• If we don’t act, we will also face at least 200 million climate refugees by 2050
• Those 1.000 billion trees we want to plant are not a solution, but they are a time buffer for politicians to finally come to a binding resolution in Paris
• That is why, over the next five days during our Youth Summit, we will be working on a manifesto which will serve as input to the coming discussions such as the G7-summit, the Bilderberg-conferences and the climate conference in Paris at the end of this year

In the photo you can see (from left to right) Joseph from Malawi, César from Mexiko, Hanna-Lena from the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, Felix from Germany, Wren from the US, Yugratna from India, Sagar from Nepal, Giovanni from Italy and Carolin from the Plant-for-the-Planet Secretariat.

You can watch scences from the press conference here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCYeRWDRciM

Felix opened the Youth Summit with a speech to the youth followed by a presentation of Prof. Mojib Latif – Humankind and the stability of the earth system. You can watch the whole presentation of Mojib Latif here: