The Maltese National Youth Council Just Set Up A Task Force To Fight Against Climate Change
In the wake of recent events such as the rise of 15-year-old Greta Thunberg, the students’ march on climate change, and polar ice caps melting, Kunsill Nazzjonali taż-Żgħażagħ (KNŻ) have just announced the launch of the ‘Environmental Task Force’.
For those of you who don’t know, KNŻ is the national organisation for youth and youth organisations in Malta. Their main focus is on crafting youth policies that affect national policy and on offering international opportunities to Maltese and Gozitan Youths.
The last big project by KNŻ was the Mental Health campaign, this project took a holistic approach towards Mental Health and youths to create a policy paper which took into account the various aspects of society, in order to make it more accessible to youths who suffer from mental health problems. It was built on the fundamental idea of inclusion and integration of youths between the ages of 13 years to 30 years old suffering from mental health disorders in our society.
The campaign included five events spread over seven months, whereby every month a different topic was discussed by the subcommittee as well as other youth members. Each topic reflected a sector in Maltese society which is of direct relevance to youths, including the education sector, employment and even the health sector. On the 9th of March, KNŻ held the closing ceremony of this project, where the results and the finalised policy paper was presented to the Deputy Prime Minister. The President of Malta and Hon. Clifton Grima were also present and gave a short speech regarding this topic.
Now, they’re moving onto their next project: The Environmental Task Force
The KNŻ Environmental Task Force will carry out field work, research and consultations with the help of experts and professionals in the various fields concerning the environment. Its main task is to draft a policy paper with proposals to be implemented on a national level to combat the effects of climate change.
This Taskforce will create a space in which Maltese youth will be encouraged to take a step further in the fight against Climate Change, by working together to develop Parliamentary Proposals related to the Environment.
The Taskforce which will be made up of several subcommittees, each working on a different topic related to the environment. The subcommittees will carry out field work, research and consultations with the help of experts and professionals in various fields concerning the environment, with the hope of having a set of parliamentary proposals submitted to parliament by October.
If you want to get involved, you can sign up here.
KNŻ has launched two very successful initiatives in the past four years
The first being Vote16, which has now been adopted into Maltese Legislation, and the second being the UN UPR Human Rights Expert Group. This group was hailed as one of the most successful national youth delegation to the UN’s UPR committee from a Youth Organisations.
Both these initiatives had a task force which focused on developing strong policy recommendations for change.