According to experts, global emissions are reaching record levels and show no sign of peaking. The last four years were the four hottest on record, and winter temperatures in the Arctic have risen by 3°C since 1990. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying, and we are starting to see the life-threatening impact of climate change on health, through air pollution, heatwaves and risks to food security. The impacts of climate change are being felt everywhere and are having very real consequences on people’s lives. Climate change is disrupting national economies, costing us dearly today and even more tomorrow. But there is a growing recognition that affordable, scalable solutions are available now that will enable us all to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies.

In the wake of these developments, young leaders from around the world convened on Saturday, September 21 to showcase climate solutions and engage with global leaders on the defining issue of our time. The UN Youth Climate Summit was a platform for young leaders who are driving climate action to showcase their solutions at the United Nations, and to meaningfully engage with decision-makers on the defining issue of our time. This historic event was part of a weekend of events leading up to the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit on Monday, September 23, 2019.

The Youth Climate Summit featured a full-day of programming that brought together young about 500 activists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and change-makers who are committed to combating climate change at the pace and scale needed to meet the challenge. It was action oriented, inter-generational, and inclusive, with equal representation of young leaders from all walks of life. This came days before a climate action summit scheduled to begin on Monday, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called to seek greater commitments from world leaders on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris accord to avert runaway global warming.

Among those in attendance on Saturday was 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who started the climate strike movement with her lone protest in front of her country’s parliament.

 “We showed we are united and young people are unstoppable,” – Greta Thunberg.

Fellow activist Bruno Rodriguez, 19, who led school strikes in his native Argentina, warned that “climate and ecological crisis” was the “political, economic and cultural crisis of our time”.

Youngsters and adults alike chanted slogans and waved placards in demonstrations that started in Asia and the Pacific, spread across Africa, Europe and Latin America, before culminating in the United States. Strike organizers 350.org said Friday’s rallies were the start of 5,800 protests across 163 countries over the next week.

The protests will coincide with a landmark UN report due to be unveiled next week which will warn global warming and pollution are ravaging Earth’s oceans and icy regions in ways that could unleash misery on a global scale. But Guterres struck a more optimistic note on Saturday, telling youth leaders that “there is a change in momentum” on the issue of climate change.  “This changing momentum was due to your initiative and to the courage with which you have started these movements,” Guterres said. “Hold my generation accountable. My generation has largely failed until now to preserve both justice in the world and the planet,” he added.

What the UN are hoping is that they can leverage all of this public pressure with the mass protests and the youth summit to Monday, the upcoming climate action summit.