this is a C N A podcast. Oliver is 11 years old, hasn't even taken his yet. Ellen is 17, hasn't taken my a levels yet is 19, hasn't even graduated from university. They shouldn't be having to come out here to give speeches because they're worried about future without a stable climate.
That was he was 23 years old giving a speech at Singapore's first climate change rally in 2019. When you picture young climate activist, you may think of Greta thunberg making passionate speeches or being detained by the german police at a coal mine protest, but beyond big rallies and rousing speeches. Young activists are working hard behind the scenes to drive climate action. Hello and welcome to
the climate conversations. I'm your host, julie you on today's episode, you'll hear from two young Singaporeans about what you don't see about youth, climate activism, their reflections and what they hope for in 2023 is the co founder of Lepak NSG Andronicus Alvin is a member of Singapore Youth for climate action. So welcome Xiangtan Ruzicka, thank you both for joining me on the climate conversations first. Let me start with you.
It's great to have you on again. I think the last time you were on the show was back in 2020 you were 24 then three years on, I mean by definition, have you sort of outgrown the age bracket of youth activists. Tell me, how do you
feel? Yeah, but I think in Singapore we can follow. Nyc definition of a youth, so hopefully I'll still be a youth activist until I turned 35.
Okay. 35. All right. So 34 years on how has it changed your involvement in climate activism? What sort of meaningful outcome have your movement achieved
having Singapore commit to? Net zero by 2050. But that's the climate side of things. For nature side of things. I have a team that looks at land use, planning and development in Singapore. So, for example, your H D B S that's being built or even L ta projects like the cross island line and we do also managed to change the way they do mitigation and development.
Okay, chica, I understand you're fairly new to the climate activism. See I want to know what galvan managed you to join the movement and speak up in the first place? I think it started off with watching Greta's infamous speech. I did a lot of research and then I realized, yeah, I would be as passionate as she is and I am upset by a lot of things that were going on.
So I wanted to do more. And so the first two or one year was doing a lot of individual work and studying mall and then I joined a WWF program called, we got this which was to rally young people in the space who really want to make a difference, I guess that was my start. So what would you say the areas you're hoping to have the biggest impact on. And would you say your target audience is the youth? Yeah.
Currently I am a core team member at Singapore Youth for climate action and I think our target audience would probably be the youth and I guess the general public and I think a lot of the work that we do kind of surrounds how do we help the public understand policy making because there's a lot of like technical terms and policies are not really written in a very easy to understand manner.
The work that we do is really just to translate policies and stuff like that to everyday people so they can really understand how these policies are going to impact them. The thing is when young people come forward to engage and anything there quite often met with patronizing responses from their elders or adults who often see youth is not knowing enough or have no real world experience. How do you get grown ups to take you guys seriously?
So I think for us we do everything science based and fact based right, as long as we are talking sense and we know what we're talking about. I think generally people listen, especially because people don't really know much about environmental issues. So even
something like where does our marine trash come from? People always think it's a little from land based sources, but actually other activists have done some research and they found that actually a lot of marine trash comes from our floating fish farms and some also comes from other countries. So when we tell people that you shouldn't litter, you should also look out for the bigger sources of marine trash, not just your personal stuff.
I guess they'll be convinced by what we say. So if you find a fridge on the beach, it's not going to come from your house and
the same challenge of being taken seriously, they may be hearing you, but maybe not really listening. Do you know what I mean? Does that road your confidence or morale over time? How do you overcome that? I think one of the things that my team, we've really heard a lot, you guys are not pragmatic enough, sometimes it really does
impact us, right? Because we know, you know that we've done our study and thankfully like last year leading up to the conference of parties, we released green policy paper and then we've had a lot of support from like the green community and they're coming in to explain a lot of things that we may not understand ourselves in certain like areas like corporate responsibility.
I guess it's really about how can we supplement our argument per se so that they don't just see us as a like emotional, like I feel like emotional as a term that like use also a lot of studying and making
sure that we can evidence whatever we say. Speaking of being heard of late, there have been news of a new tactic when it comes to finding climate change, throwing food at famous paintings in the name of the climate crisis for some of us who are used to seeing activists holding placards in the street, these stunts maybe a bit confounding. What is your view on that or there's just attention seekers and can they give activism a bad name? What do you think? Would you
so okay, I definitely wouldn't do this, not in Singapore, right, because I'll probably end up in changi prison, but honestly, I think it's very context dependent on other countries where they have different considerations and if they feel it's a legitimate tactic for them, then they're free to do it and face the consequences. Well, I personally support them doing it. I don't know. I've been thinking about this also
as a fellow activists because their point is to raise awareness and draw attention to the climate crisis in a nonviolent way.
I guess from what I see, the outcome that they are having is not really more attention to the climate crisis, but more people asking why are you being so stupid and throwing soup on a painting has never done anything to you, stop it. So, if you look at the outcome, I think probably isn't an effective tactic for them.
Would you, would you agree? Yeah, I think context really, it definitely does matter a lot. Also thinking from the point of activists, I guess for them to throw soup at a painting, they have a lot of anger inside them. And I feel like whenever we plan something, we really have to think about what we want to gain from this, it's like do we want people to ask why are we throwing soup at a painting? Or do we want people to ask, Oh
yeah,
like what's happening with climate dresses, so different tactics, different approaches. I wonder has your approach to climate activism changed over the years? Do you think there's a need to change with the times, new developments or challenges? What do you think?
So I think our approach is generally science based, sex based and targeted at the national level, but before you were doing this actually we would I guess trying to persuade individuals to change their lifestyles. And one thing that triggered this change was because I was at a food court one day And it's a hot day, right? So me and my friend wanted to get cold drinks and then we were like environmentalists, so we shouldn't use straws. But before we could even get to the counter, the lady at the
counter knocked over an entire container of straws. So I guess in three seconds 100 straws were gone. And then And then we got thinking right, like, oh if we reject a straw every day of our life, maybe you can reject 365 straws a year, right? And in three seconds someone can undo your efforts and it's because they have straws on the table top in the first place, right? If we can have systemic change whereby let's say they don't give out straws in the first place or they hide the straw somewhere
right? Then actually the amount of change that we can have, it's way bigger than just convincing everyone to not use straws because they're always be someone who wants the straw. I
think I definitely agree. It brings up like this very common debate in activism is individual action better or is collective action better. Right? That's the huge mind shift change that I had also at the beginning, although I can do all these changes sometimes a bigger impact can be created when I contribute my resources or like my skill sets to I guess like a bigger organization. But I also do feel that individual action is what gets most people like started on like their journeys right?
For me, it kind of reminds me why do I make these minor changes in my life? I just drop in the bucket. Yes. I think that's definitely like one thing I like a mind shift change. I think another thing for me would be this idea that how involved cancers or Corporates get right initially at the start, I always saw them as like, oh, it's very different. The people and the private and the public sector are like very different, right?
As I grow, I start to realize that the issue that we're facing is all hands on deck kind of issue, right? And it's like we can't keep working in like separate circles. That's an area that I'm particularly very interested to study even more. Like how do we get all hands on deck and how do we get really the mind shift to change from discussions to action? Yeah, I mean you guys just mentioned the systematic change in the government and
corporation level is what's needed. But we all know that it's not easy to take on these powerful businesses and governments and some critics might say that all of these sort of youth led protests have done little to sway politics or policies on climate change. But I want to ask you guys how effective are they really? Youth activism.
Okay. So what context? Sure. For what we do at NSG actually I think we've been fairly successful.
Okay, when
we first started covering environmental impact assessments, the government and the family are basically reached out to us and said look we know you're interested in E. I. S. And stuff. Can we invite you to some engagement sessions where we will share the findings of an E. I. A what mitigation measures we're taking to save as many trees as we can or build as least destructively as they can.
We went in and then during these consultations we did give some inputs and then when you see the final product they really did try to take our input. So for example. Okay this one's not from but from
any young who's a primatologist. She was talking about how the L. T. A. Across the line work site should be shifted to not affect the habitat of this very rare monkey called the raffles banded langur so far across the land line they really did shift the work side and they tried to reduce the amount of land that they would need to deforest for their work sites so we can see that yes the construction goes ahead but the destruction that they create, it's less than what would
have been without the inputs of nature groups. I think even four years ago they said that zero is impossible. It's not practical to have net zero because we have our petrol camps, how many percent GDP how many 1000 jobs fast forward to today and suddenly oh look it's perfectly acceptable for us to get to zero right? So things can change and they have changed. I wouldn't say like our activism has been not effective but it's just sometimes a lot of the changes are not seen by people who are
not part of the process. Yeah
it takes time doesn't it? Yeah and great efforts.
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Alright, so Jessica, you were in Egypt for last year's cop 27 representing Singapore. Obviously there are highs and lows at the event. Some of your colleagues and other youth activists I spoke to told me that they left energized or while some of them said that they became a little bit more jaded due to the lack of will and ambition they saw from the leaders at the event. What was your experience like?
Um I guess something that really stuck out to me was this jarring disconnect because you have all the these negotiators and they're just really making decisions on behalf of the countries that ultimately whatever decision that they make
their will trickle down to people on the ground. You see them arguing and arguing over certain texts and certain words on the other hand, you have youth activists and you have ingenious groups and marginalized groups really just calling for urgent action now and it's just like why is the process so long? I guess that's the real thing that really hit me. And do they really see what's going on in the same space? You have
two different sets of realities. Right. And I guess like seeing it for two weeks straight was very, very overwhelming. It's like a first time also because it's like oh my gosh, absolutely inspiring and frustrating at the same time I must say. And big conferences like copper always a sobering reminder of just how difficult it is to get that genuine climate action. And and some young people remain skeptical of these climate conferences, big events. What frustrates you and worries you the most.
I mean would you ever go to a cop event anytime soon?
I might go this year.
Okay Dubai will
be there. So I've actually never gone to court previously for several reasons. One was because I felt like whatever action needs to be taken needs to happen before the cop even happens. Right. And that's where I can most like pushing people in Singapore like commit to stronger targets for example. And then the other thing was because international negotiations is very complicated and then there's so many environmental issues already learning about and I was like, do I want to take up one more?
Yeah. Yeah. That's why I haven't really gone for previous cops. Yeah
but how about this year
I was offered an opportunity to go and I thought why not
Cop 28, What would you like to see?
It is a hard question because I evidently have not been following the national negotiations, but
if your voices can be heard. I mean the good thing about last year's cop is that it was the very first time Children and young people and having their own pavilion a space where they can run their own events at cops. So Cop 27 If you're there, is there something that you would like to address? Who would you say is your climate villain? Maybe we can start there. I
guess the climate villains would be the big oil and gas companies cool as well.
The message that you maybe like to get across
B. L. C. Keep everything in the ground because I was reading about how some of the oil and gas companies were planning to extract even more oil and gas from the ground when they publicly committed to net zero targets. I guess what their internal documents leaked out and what they publicly say don't really tally so keep it in the ground.
So re chicha for those use out there who not only wish to take part and have their voices heard but want to be a real effective youth activist share with me sort of a step by step guide to becoming one where should they start I guess for me, I started off with studying because like people doing volunteer work maybe to get away from studies but studying more studying, I think that a lot of great resources, I think industry is definitely one of those resources shout out.
Um but I think you can start with like podcasts recommend the climate conversation. There we go. Thanks. I think don't be defined by what you think that advocacy can be or what traditional forms advocacy is, because advocacy really truly comes in like many different ways, right? Arts and then you have music and people have different
strengths and people have different talents. So I think that we do in our policy workshop is I guess like we help people brainstorm the strength that they have and if they can be used in movements and how they can be used and we do that through a series of discussions with other youths for people to understand that activism is not really like categories like you're either it's never like you're on the streets or you're not on the streets, There's like a
whole broad spectrum say, well what would you say? How loud do you have to be to be heard? You have to be a good orator like yourself, be creative, tell a good story, surely can be about throwing food and artwork or anything. What would you say based on your experience?
So I would think it's more important to know your own skills and also to identify gaps in current efforts and finding our own. It is very important because there's actually so many issues out there that we could be
working on. Right, not just climate, there's no civil society group talking about water security for example, but that's because he's doing a great job, I guess even in the climate space, a lot of people talking about climate mitigation and how we should reduce our greenhouse gasses, but we don't really think about how we should be doing climate adaptation as
well because rising sea levels are a thing. The urban heat is a thing, even vector prevention, like mosquitoes, Dengue, Those are things that no one is really talking about in the environmental civil society space, people
can actually relate to.
So there's so many potential things that people could do and what we are working on now is really just like a tiny, tiny subset of what needs to be done. So there's a lot of space for people to come in, find your niche, know what your own skills are. And you can do something
as a person who actually launched these sort of movement. I've seen many of feel my friends or contacts that have tried to rally people, create groups and make movement, but they failed. It just ended up being sort of fizzle out and became nothing. So what's the best way to gather these people with the same mind? Would you have like a formula or meet the right people?
I think everyone would have their own way, the way I do, it might not work for everyone, but I'm personally very interested. So I just ask people, would you like to read through 500 pages of environmental impact assessments and then if you say yes, welcome. Right. If we keep working on something over time we become known for that thing and people automatically email into us. Can we join? I guess if you just keep working on it and don't give up, you'll get somewhere eventually Refik
a you're also in this journey, what do you think will actually incite change based on your experience? I think change is like a really big word, right? And I guess when we look at change we look at many different things, but I feel like an all hands on deck approach would be very, very useful. But I suppose for the space that I work in which is with community, right.
I feel like the first step is really to removing that barrier for people who may not necessarily have all the knowledge, all the skills to come and understand really, what is climate change about and why are people doing what they do, translating those conversations into action? Like how do we get there? That is definitely one of the things that could really help with change. That's
a great point actually. And looking forward seeing 10, where would you like to see this youth climate activism movement go
next forward? Okay, seriously though, I guess we should be looking more into Corporates rather than just the government. I think if you look at just what the fossil-fuel companies are paying in Texas, I think in 2019 shall paid something like 2% and BP paid something like 6%. The headline corporate tax rate is 17%. So it's things like that that people need to dig into because Corporates are also affecting
our national policies. So there's two examples I can think of back in, I think 27 28 any actually wanted to do some kind of plastic reduction program like extended producer responsibility. So I think back then industry said, oh
don't worry, we can handle this on our own. So they came up with this thing called the Singapore packaging agreement Which aims to reduce 10,000 tons of packaging a year, which sounds like a lot, but if you do the calculations, it's 2% of our yearly packaging waste, so they aim for 10,000 tons a year and they never hit that target ever. So they successfully blocked action on waste for
like 10 years, 15 years. That was bad until I guess any and MSC or back then it was me, they were like let's just do this extended producer responsibility and mandatory packaging reporting. So that's coming up I think this year and next year and then I think carbon tax in 2018 when government announced they are looking at 10 to $20 per ton. But after consultations with industry became $5 a ton, so they definitely did block the carbon tax from being higher and back then the
government's response society. So these companies if they go somewhere else they'll just do it dirtier and there'll be no that difference. But fast forward to today. I think they recognize that they can't let industry block them from taking stronger action. That's why they're upping the carbon tax to 25, and beyond.
So I would hope the climate movement or the environmental movement looks more into what Corporates have been doing to block action in Singapore and we make it more transparent that they have been doing that so government can make even stronger climate policies.
Okay, Jessica your goal for 2023, what are you looking forward to? My goal for 2023 is I guess to really incite more conversations and maybe for more people who are at the start of the environmental journey to see more of them at our policy workshops, but I guess just really extending outreach effort with the community on the ground to get these environmental policies to them even more so, I think
that's definitely my goal personally. I also would like to do a lot more on the ground and reconnecting with nature because I do feel like that's actually a very important part sometimes, especially with advocacy, we get so caught up with a lot of big issues and then in the end we burn out. So I feel like it's important that we have something like nature to really keep us for focus and keep us grounded. So I think definitely a lot more beach walks and tree planting at the same time.
Rush chicha, I mean it's certainly very inspiring to listen to your courage and ambition and I think anyone, regardless of age, background or experience can take comfort in knowing that our youth are motivated to take action and make some positive change to help our planet survive. Thank you so much for joining me today, it was so lovely to talk to you.
Thank you for inviting us.
Thanks to my guest and Ruzicka and thanks to all of you for tuning in, We hope you enjoyed this episode that do remember to subscribe and like this podcast. So you know, when a new episode drops, you can find CNN's climate and sustainability coverage online at sienna dot asia. But the team behind this podcast is Joanne, Chen, saya, Lynn, Jacqueline Chen and Christina robert and I'm julie you signing off