European Youth Perspective Conference on Biodiversity

La 3e édition de YouPEC se déroulera en Belgique. Cette conférence se veut être un forum où la voix des jeunes Européens est entendue. Durant ces 5 jours, 150 Européens partageront leurs connaissances et leurs expériences sur la conservation de la biodiversité. Les résultats recueillis seront regroupés dans une déclaration sur la conservation de la biodiversité avec des recommandations politiques pour l’Union européenne.

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The YouPEC conference will span from the 1st of July when the participants start arriving to the 6th of July when the conference ends. The conference will focus on 4 main themes of Biodiversity:

• Introduction biodiversity
• Biodiversity in relation to Global- and Climate change
• The Economics and value of biodiversity
• Europe and biodiversity (policy in Europe)

The participants will be able to choose from 5 lectures of each theme. The 5th theme will be a mixture of the other 4 themes. The biodiversity lectures will be followed by time for discussions where participants in the different lectures will be able to present the outcome of their respective session to the others. The lectures will be carried out by lecturers experienced in the field of study and also by environmental and nature campaigners.

We also will have two sessions of capacity building workshops where participants can choose from 5 different workshops. These workshops will focus on subjects like fundraising, action planning, how to work with volunteers and will help the participants to gain the necessary tools to become more equipped for campaigning on nature and environment issues.

Participants will definitely have time to enjoy themselves during YouPEC. We have some cool fun stuff planned for the evenings, from showing some recent movies and documentaries, a cultural night, a special kind of Bingo and some walks. In each YouPEC conference the participants take it to the streets for an environmental action; in 2010 to promote the cause of Biodiversity conservation. Participants will have to prepare colourful action material for the YouPEC environmental action which from the plans we have so far, will be one day to remember.

Those participants interested in communicating their opinion on European Biodiversity Conservation to politicians will also be able to practise into representative democracy. A declaration team will be formed from the participants themselves; from different countries in Europe and with a balance between female and male participants. The team will have to develop a declaration with policy recommendations on biodiversity conservation to the European Union. The team will use the minutes from the different workshops and also look at the convention on Biodiversity and European policy. The declaration team will use consensus decision-making.

One of the things that makes YouPEC unique as a conference is the Open space time. During the YouPEC 2010 Open Space the participants will have to develop doable and realistic projects related to Biodiversity Conservation. Open Space Technology is a self-organising process where participants get to construct the agenda and schedule during the meeting itself. Open Space Technology enables groups of any size to address complex, important issues and achieve meaningful results quickly. The facilitator will greet the people and briefly re-state the theme of their gathering. Then someone will invite all participants to identify any issue or opportunity related to the theme. Participants willing to raise a topic will come to the centre of the circle, write it on a sheet of paper and announce it to the group before choosing a time and a place for discussion and posting it on a wall. After the first day of discussion and development of ideas for projects through the open space process the participants will have time to join similar initiatives together and to come up with a more specific idea for their projects. Some really good, ambitious ideas and projects have come out from previous YouPEC conferences.