Youth Leading Change Towards Adaptation

Interview conducted and condensed by

Alan Jarandilla Nuñez

Fernando Escobar, 25, is a youth activist from a rural community of Bolivia called Ixiamas. He is passionate about environment and community development. Although he is not part of a youth organization or NGO, he is committed to working for his community to implement adaptation actions. He started learning about adaptation and climate change by his own, as a result of the effects that climate change has had in his community.

Q. Fernando, when did you become an activist?

A. I became an activist just a year ago, before that I just dedicated my time to the university and my family?s farm.

Q. What made you become an activist?

A. I don?t think there is just one answer for that question. I think that there are many things that influenced me to start trying to help my community and start advocacy actions. Bad experiences usually make us change our opinions and actions and I think that is one of the things that has influenced me the most. Raining in this months (January-February) is very common here. It rains a lot. But, two years ago things got worse.  Raining was so terrible that brought floods, causing severe consequences for my community. My family and friends lost everything, we were not prepared for that and humanitarian aid was insufficient. The next year, happened just the same, nobody did nothing to avoid the same consequences. After that, I felt guilty. I felt guilty because I did nothing, just as everybody. We all were waiting for someone else to do something to solve our problems and that didn?t happen. So, I decided to do something but didn?t know where to start. I started to look for information by myself about what was happening and why. I learned about global warming, climate change and its effects and I realized that what was happening in my community was exactly that. So I decided to start an advocacy campaign with other community members. We need adaptation plans and disaster and risk prevention plans to avoid this things happening again and we are asking our local government to work on them collaboratively.

Q. What are the results that the campaign has had?

A. At the moment the campaign has had important results. We are not part of a formal NGO, or CSO, or youth organization. We are just people that want to make change. For that reason, at the beginning I had the impression that the local government wouldn't pay attention to the demands of a small group of people, because we started as a very small group of people but they did. Now we are consolidating an Emergency Operations Center and we are setting working groups for the local adaptation plan. I think we are making real change.

Q. So, this experience made you believe in the power of youth to create real change.

A. Absolutely. I?m convinced that youth can change things. I?m trying to, I hope we will achieve big things in my community. So all young people should try. We should try to lead change everywhere.