Youth and the Environment (My views and experiences)

I am 21 years old and as an environment enthusiastic youth, I am sharing my views and experiences about "Youth and the Environment" along with its robust bonding. 

Who are youth? And what are the current environmental issues?

In my perception, youth is the jewel of the environment. Because youth are only the active members of the society who can take actions against the increasing environmental issues and also carry their responsibility for its protection. Climate change, plastic pollution, illegal wildlife trade, deforestation, and forest fire are the contemporary issues that our mother earth is facing. And all these issues are putting our earth in peril. Youth are only the members who will be facing these issues for a long period. Henceforth, youth must be conscious of such environmental plights.

What youth can do?

 In their locality:

Together, youth can engage in many adequate activities to mitigate all these embedded issues. Climate change is the major concern in today's era bringing life-threatening effects on flora and fauna. Youth can organize street drama, rally, and awareness campaign regarding the effects of increasing greenhouse gases in their area. Youth can follow 3R (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) initiative and motivate their elders and juniors for putting down plastic pollution in their locality. Community-based conservation, public education, strengthening the action research, etc. are the best solutions that the youth can do in their locality for curbing illegal wildlife trade and saving the endangered species from the brink of extinction. For deforestation and forest fire, youth can forward many awareness activities and community drama relating the effects of deforestation and forest fire.

 Nationally and Internationally:

A group of active young people can cooperate and create a separate non-profit youth organization or youth club in their nation and engage several young minds towards environmental protection. They can formulate the environmental action plan to their nation. Further, the members can participate in International level conferences and consortium where the youth from the respective nation can share their ideas and opinions about the environmental issues that their nation are facing and the way ahead to mitigate those. In this above way, youth can be a part of their nation and the whole world.

My experiences: As a passionate youth, I am doing my best from my level and planning to do more for the environment and wildlife. My relevant experiences were about; 

-Conducting teaching and awareness programs related to wildlife conservation mainly targeting the young school children around many areas of Kaski district, Nepal.

-Participating in many conservation, research and volunteer activities in many programs and environment occasions.

-Conducting action research for the conservation of endangered small mammals especially endangered pangolins (Pangolins are the most trafficked mammals in the world).

In a nutshell:

I think the youth have the extensive energy to change their community, nation, and the whole world too in context to the environment if they are given a good opportunity to act. And they should roar like the real lion and fight against increasing environmental issues.