IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Preparing for Congress: Strengthening intergenerational partnerships for sustainability within CEESP and across Commissions

07 May 2012 | News story

Catie Burlando
Intergenerational Partnership Advisor, CEESP  

Daniela Barguil Gallardo
CoopSoliDar R.L., CEESP Youth Leadership Team

The CEESP Youth Leadership Team is involved in a number of exciting events that will take place at the World Conservation Congress this coming September. The CEESP Youth Network's link in the IUCN page will be used together with the wikispac e to keep you posted on these and other events being planned in the coming months.

Our group is happy to support CEESP-TGER member Caroline Seagle , a young professional that was able to secure the nominations needed to run in the September elections as a Regional Councillor for North America and the Caribbean . Caroline is a PhD candidate in anthropology with a joint appointment at the VU University Amsterdam and McGill University. She has a strong interest in environmental justice and the politics of human-environment interactions, and her research examines corporate engagements in sustainability and biodiversity conservation within the context of large-scale mining in Madagascar.

As part of the Task Force on Intergenerational Partnership for Sustainability, the CEESP Youth Network is promoting a global logo competition .  The winning logo will be used by the Task Force on Intergenerational Partnership for Sustainability and will be unveiled at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in South Korea this September. For details of the call, please click here .

The Task Force on Intergenerational Partnership for Sustainability is leading the “Youth Engagement and Intergenerational Partnership for Sustainability: Toward a Cross-Commission Action Plan” workshop. This workshop seeks to (1) Review past achievements of youth engagement and intergenerational partnership within each Commission, with a focus on sharing lessons learnt since 2008; (2) Draft an agenda and work plan for action for 2013 – 2016 within each Commission and across the IUCN Commissions as a whole; and (3) Highlight all youth and intergenerational events at the Congress . 

Please contact us if you are part of a workshop or Congress event that : 

• promotes youth engagement and/or intergenerational partnerships;
• has a special interest in integrating youth voices;
• is organized at least in part by young professionals.

CoopSoliDar R.L., CEESP and the CEESP Youth Network are partnering to bring young fisherfolks to the Congress as part of the “ Dreaming of marine conservation and people of the sea. Ensuring equity: coastal communities and cultural and social resilience as potential for marine conservation and participatory governance ” knowledge cafe. 

In preparation for this event, young fisherfolks from Central American came together at the regional civil society consultation on FAO's “Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries” that took place in Nicaragua on February 18, 2012. The meeting gathered representatives from different fisherfolk organizations and national federations from Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Panamá, including the young members, in order to discuss their perspectives on this new instrument and the general challenges of the sector in Central America.  The young representatives discussed the challenges youth face in coastal communities, and the opportunities of their contribution to responsible resource use and the well-being and development of their communities.  

This regional consultation—and the prior national consultations that took place in each of the countries—was made reality thanks to the support of the International Collective of Fishworkers (ICSF), World Forum of Fish workers and Fish Harvesters (WFF) and World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), the Confederation of Artisanal Fishers of Central America (CONFEPESCA), and CoopeSoliDar R.L. The CEESP Youth Network contributed to seeking funding for the participation of the young participants at this event, which was provided by the Canada Research Chair in Community-based Natural Resource Management (CRC) and Fauna and Flora International (FFI). Further collaboration aims to develop a space for the young men and women fisher participants to voice their own views on their situation as young fisher folks ; as well as to seek some of the funding needed by the selected young fisherfolks to attend the Congress.

If you would like to be involved in any of the Youth Leadership Team activities leading to the Congress, and at the Congress itself, please send an e-mail to catie@culturallandscapes.ca.