Today, Seychelles had a meeting at the STC Conference Room, in our city, Victoria - World Wide Views on Climate Change, which will be sent to Paris COP21 - to help with the agreements which will be discussed and made.

At the start of the meeting, we had a small introduction by the facilitator (from the Ministry) and the Minister for Environment of the Seychelles. The Environment Minister says that 40-50% of coral reefs in the Seychelles is already gone. It has been forecast that by 2050 all corals in the world will be lost! He also mentioned that only 2.5% of total energy produced by the country is from renewable sources.

The participating citizens (mixed between the youth, middle aged and elderly) were placed at tables, 6-7 persons per table. Each session of the meeting started by a short introduction movie, outlining the theme?s main problems, again as presented in the information material, followed by a discussion facilitated by a teacher in which the citizens can share their views and thoughts on the theme, and learn by and with each other. The session is rounded up by a vote, in which each citizen can express his or her view through anonymous votes on prefabricated questions relating to the theme?s problems.

At the end of the meeting, the participating citizens have discussed a handful of themes and voted on these, based on their own thoughts, the information material and videos and their discussion with fellow citizens. The voting results will be uploaded to a web tool as they are available at the meeting and are thus instantly available to everyone.

The web tool makes it possible to view and compare the views of citizens from all over the world as soon as they have voted.

The event was being coordinated by Ministry of Education, Environmental Unit. 

We learnt lots and had a great time! We hope that the questionnaires that we filled helped to make a difference and help with the discussions which will be held in Paris in December - looking forward.