Climate Change

Climate change is now widely recognised as the major environmental problem facing the globe.  It has economic, health, food production, migration, gender equality, security, and other consequences for the world’s population.  Shifting weather patterns, for example, threaten food production, rising sea levels contaminate coastal freshwater reserves and increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, and a warming atmosphere is leading to the spread of pests and diseases once limited to the tropics.

If global warming continues at its current pace, it won’t be long before millions more are exposed to starvation, diminishing water supplies and related diseases.  Vulnerable groups such as children and young people are at particularly high risk. Ensuring environmental sustainability is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals, but we are still far from reaching the targets for 2015.

For over 25 years, YMCAs around the world have been implementing programmes that aim to protect and preserve the earth’s resources for coming generations.  In fact, this was identified as a priority by the World Alliance of YMCAs’ Executive Committee as early as 1982, and reaffirmed in resolutions on the environment adopted at the 12th and 15th World Councils of YMCAs, as well as in the YMCA’s contemporary mission statement, Challenge 21, adopted in 1998.

YMCA action on the environment includes awareness raising, advocacy, community-based actions, and agricultural and energy-preservation programmes. YMCA initiatives frequently focus on young people’s leadership and participation in actions to combat climate change. 

At the World Alliance level, together with the Alliance of Youth CEOs (AYCEO) and UNICEF, we are producing a Guide for young people to take leadership in addressing climate change.  The World Alliance of YMCAs also participates in key international meetings and events related to Climate Change, in order to give visibility to the YMCA Movement’s extensive work in the field, and to support other youth and ecumenical partner organisations in civil society’s call for climate justice.

Learn more about our activities on the environment and related issues such as Food Security and Migration:

• YMCAs and the Environment
• Global Hunger
• Youth and Migration