THE FIRST ANNUAL KENYA NATIONAL YOUTH CLIMATE ACTION INNOVATION SUMMIT REPORT

Executive Summary The First Youth Climate Action Summit highlighted future opportunities on youth leadership in Climate Action, their strategic perspective to climate response and the overall importance of embedding Climate Action agenda into public policy, public investment and community awareness. It showcased the strategic opportunities for youth that remain largely untapped as knowledge holders, knowledge sharers, crossgenerational educatorsand overall, actors. The summit provided a fundamental platform for the discussion to occur amongst the larger youth population in their diversity about climate action and change. A panel of speakers embraced a traditional message stick identifying pathways and capturing various perspectives from Lost opportunities of the past and the current to future opportunity costs. Day 1 of the summit discussions delved majorly on the aspect of mobilization of youth voices for climate action focusing on strategies, opportunities and spaces/platforms for uptake and practice while day 2 agenda was premised mainly on opportunity costs for Kenyan youth – in their broad diversity, to influence multistakeholder action and priorities to deepening accountability and realization of climate action commitments. During the summit, it was reiterated that youth are ready to create an enabling environment, meaningfully participate in enacting policies and investment allocations, and ring-fencing to meet climate action commitments, and over time contribute successfully to sustainable development, including waste management in its entirety. The summit recognized the youth’s significant demographic capital wealth, which contributes to and informs the trajectory of Kenya’s policies relevant to climate and environment, as well as global commitments on climate action to the overall country, regional, and global reduction of carbon emissions, and the youth demographic to be translated into waged and entrepreneurial opportunities. Further, the summit noted that Kenya’s commitment to empowering the Kenyan youth in their broad diversity will be critical in Kenya’s overall climate action agenda. The panel narratives provided valuable insights for multi-stakeholder collaborations [Government, corporate agencies, donor agencies, youth and the boarder social communities] in meaningful policy discourse and key recommendations for implementation of strategies. A shared position developed by the participants in the part of “The Youth Declaration on Climate Action” was developed and shared with representatives to the Permanent Secretary [PS] in the Government of Kenya at the Ministry of Labour. The statement was the culmination of the 2-day intricate social, economic, cultural and development knowledge, awareness and practice for uptake by youth and other core-stakeholders. Central to these discussion was the collective support for the inclusion of youth voices and establishment of vibrant youth agency.