Youth participation
As outlined in Chapter 25 of Agenda 21, and Principle 21 of the Rio Declaration, all youth must have equal access to meaningful participation in local, regional and national forums to further the role of youth in formulating the policies that impact them in their communities. In particular, national and international governments and organizations must adequately support youth who have limited access to resources, infrastructure and information, especially people from developing countries.

Education:
[Add making sustainable development education a theme within the CSD 10-year framework?]

We urge you to make sustainable development accessibile in the sense of continuing to provide forums for youth to speak at the CSD and UN, but also in the sense that the multiple existing policies and frameworks can be communicated to people outside the UN. Youth are less likely to learn the vocabulary of “partnerships” and “frameworks” but we can fall in love with the ideas of sustainable development and be active in their communities. We urge you to make sustainable development part of education systems, just as we encourage more than environment ministers to be at this meeting, take sustainable development out of just science classes and into --- so it can become the holistic concept that it is.

We welcome the General Assembly’s adoption of the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development starting in 2005 to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Web-based programs like EarthYouth.net, conceived and run entirely by young people, are now available to present the mass of resources on sustainable development in a simplified manner accessible to young people

Youth Employment:
(Long-term goal)
Youth employment is an issue of urgent concern because it is a pre-requisite for the eradication of poverty. Youth require capacity building and employment programs at national and local levels. Governments must agree to create job opportunities by 2012.

Two-thirds of the worlds poor live in rural areas. Youth migrate to cities because rural areas lack schools and job opportunities. Many youth would prefer to stay in rural areas with their families and communities, however they need reasons to stay. It is no one else’s responsibility but the governments to invest in rural economies and infrastructure to create job opportunities. We suggest governments promote and develop micro-industries, focus on increasing access for people in rural areas to markets, and making sure key information about climate change and market access reaches people in rural areas. Sustainable rural livelihoods will not happen if people living in rural areas do not have access to information. We as youth call upon governments to lead the way because young people dream of being able to live off the land and not having to move to the cities, but they also dream of roads and electricity and stable futures. Capacity building among people living in poverty, and among young people, will go a long way to create a sustainable future.

Capacity Building
Education is a first step towards capacity building, and needs to be complemented by actions. This is the mission of the Youth Employment Summit, “the launch of a Decade Campaign of Action, so that an additional 500 million young adults, especially youth facing poverty, will have productive and sustainable livelihoods by the year 2012”.

Regionalism
As young people we are concerned about the “crisis” in the UN system. We want a future of cooperation and information exchange between countries for our world environment. As we travel the world and make new kinds of international friendships through the internet like no other generation has done before, we are the first to realize that rivers cross borders and regions must work together. Therefore we strongly support to make regional cooperation and meetings integral to the work plan. We think regional approaches will demand more accountability and implementation at local levels. We will be the ones working at the local level…