Empowering youth for climate action, organized by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the City of Milan, via the European project FoodWave, in the framework of the Youth COP is an opportunity, to create an exchange between young activists and decision makers on ideas and views on possible strategies to tackle climate change at the local level. A key principle of this virtual event is to include young people and their vision in the debate on climate, by giving them a space to express their demands for actions to be taken in the years to come, and their ideas on their own contributions to fight climate change.

In recent years, young leaders across the world has raised its voice demanding the government's attention to the fight against climate change. Through demonstrations, European cities asked for more ambitious, urgent actions but also for an acknowledgement on the role that youth can play in making these objectives a reality. They proved to have the knowledge, the capacity, the energy and the will to concretely support a rapid shift toward more sustainable lifestyles.

This session aims to provide a platform for youth to pitch what can be achieved in the fight against climate change with their help and how they can support governments in advancing toward climate objective while securing youth representation in policy processes. An open call was launched to collect inputs from young Europeans (18- 35yo) on the engagement of youth in climate action around three main aspects: sustainable food systems, fair ecological transition and youth engagement in climate policy.The selected applicants will be invited to join the event in person and their ask, expanded in 3-minutes pitches, will serve to trigger three subsequent rounds of discussion among the invited speakers, representatives at the local and EU level who will engage on the inputs presented during the pitches.

The event is part of All4Climate Italy 2021, the programme launched by the Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition in the lead up to COP26, the major international event related to climate change.The key messages from this session will feed the conversation at the DaringCities Conference and COP26 among the others. and

The event will be livestreamed on the FoodWave website and Social Media.