Middle East and North Africa Climate Week
By: Ayshka Najib, Youth Climate Activist and UAE NDC Ambassador to Care About Climate
The MENA CW gave us the platform to raise critical issues, amplify the work we are doing and the solutions we would like to bring to the table.
Growing up in the UAE, the climate movement often felt very distant to me. I did not see the representation and neither did my country’s dynamics allow me to replicate some of the strategies. As a youth climate advocate, who has now been pursuing environmental work for about five years, I had to be innovative and explore the resources that’s available to me to uplift issues that were important to me. And so oftentimes the minesterials were our streets. The MENA Climate Week was an amazing opportunity for us as youth in this region to showcase that we too have an immense contribution to make to the global dialogue on climate change.
As a youth representative at the Climate Week, I focused on attending several side events, high level dialogues and participating in conversations at the action hub to gather insights on the different ways the climate crisis is affecting the MENA region! I also learned about various initiatives to tackle these challenges and how I as a young person can get involved.
As a panelist at the Care About Climate side event on ”Analyzing MENA NDCS Through A Gender And Youth Lens”, I was able to share my research analysis on UAE’s NDCs to a wider audience and open up discussions on how we can work together to act on the issues concluded from the analysis.
On a professional level it was a great opportunity to understand what are the different activities that I can get involved in that are happening in the region and who are the important stakeholders that can support me in the work I'm doing.
Personally, being the youngest person in some of the rooms was terrifying at first. Initially, I was extremely self conscious of the way I presented myself. But, I met so many youth activists from the region who shared similar concerns and feelings as I did and it felt incredible to find your community who promises to show active solidarity, support, and love as we MENA youth continue to rebuild and reimagine the systems and structures that disempower us.