There are countries, companies and international organisations (UNEP, IRENA) galore exhibiting at the big hall here in Abu Dhabi. The only big international environment ngo with a presence appears to be WWF, which works together with EWS, the Emirates Wildlife Society. All the greater was my disappointment when I was refused entry to an official side event organised jointly by these two groups  on the “Role of Renewable Energy in the GCC”. Since that is the main focus of my trip here, I was keen to get the WWF perspective on this. I was actually asked to leave the room, so wasn’t able to hear the representatives of UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman talk about their projects, chaired by Samantha Smith, the leader of WWF International’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative. Frustrating to have missed out on that opportunity, to which I had felt officially invited.

In Trondheim at the weekend, I came across this group of young people from Natur og Ungdom, or “Nature and Youth”, also known as Young Friends of the Earth Norway.
Good to see the young generation taking an interest in our future energy supplies.

Beyond penguins and polar bears is a website you have to look at for the pictures alone – as well as understandable information on polar issues.
It’s actually an educational website for teachers. I found out about it because it has just won a science prize for online education SPORE
The idea is to use the appeal of penguins and polar bears to get kids interested in science. But there ‘s a lot of background on there for us adults as well.

Ilulissat was once a small trading post. Nowadays it has 4,500 inhabitants, and the number is growing rapidly.

You can smell fish in quite a few parts of the town. Fishing is the number one industry

It happens on a commercial scale, particularly for halibut and shrimps. The town has a shrimp processing factory. The fish factory has moved further south, and people tell us the trend is increasingly towards factory ships, which process the fish as they’re caught.
Administration is the 2nd biggest employer. Ilulissat is the centre for a huge area around it, going right up to Quanaag in the far north. Tourism is the 3rd factor. It’s growing, but currently suffering from the world economic crisis. There are actually very few tourists in the town right now. The town still feels like boom-town, and the civil engineer tells me all the building work is the rush to build new houses for the growing population in the very short building season, before everything has to stop for the winter in October.

Ilulissat’s main attraction are the icebergs, floating in the fjord after breaking off from the Kangia glacier or Jakobshauen, which was the Danish name for it and the town. This is the most “productive” glacier in the northern hemisphere, discharging ice from the inland ice sheet into the sea at a tremendous rate. More about that later. The constantly changing panorama of icebergs of all different shapes and sizes creates the very special identity of Ilulissat.
The icefjord was added to UNESCO’S World Heritage List in 2004 because of its dramatic beauty and its unique glaciological characteristics. The organisation has now opened an office in the town that keeps an eye on it and supports measures to protect it – with a little help from friends like the volunteers brought here by a group called MS.

Lars from Germany and Martin from Switzerland are two of a group of 10 young people spending their summer holidays as volunteers here. They’ve helped organise a traditional music festival in one of the remote northern towns. Now they’re helping Naja Habermann, who runs the UNESCO office, to mark the hiking paths – like the one that took me along the ice fjord yesterday – which help people appreciate the natural beauty of the region without having too much of an impact on the countryside. These are the people who spend the day walking the paths and painting the markers. More power to you folks!
Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, “ms act!onaid denmark” is the ngo that brings them here, with its “global contact” programme. They come from a variety of European countries. When I asked them why they do it, Lars and Martin both told me they want to do something more meaningful than lie on a beach all summer, and they’re keen to get to know other peoples and cultures. They also see it as a unique opportunity to get to a remote region of the world they would otherwise fail to see. I asked them whether climate change was important to them, against the background of this glacier discharging icebergs at an increasing rate. While they both said this hadn’t been their reason for coming here, they are very concerned about what’s happening and feel strongly the industrialised west should reduce emissions and its footprint. Talking to young people in Greenland, they found it interesting to hear a different view here. Awareness of the problems is not so high – and some of the people they talked to were happy about being able to grow more food in southern Greenland.

Caroline (right) and Sisse are coordinating the project, both here on a voluntary basis. They’re committed to promoting intercultural dialogue and bringing young people from different backgrounds together to work on projects like protecting the world’s heritage.

“It’s a dog’s life” in Ilulissat. Sled dogs have enforced holidays at least until October.

It’s World Youth Day today. I know, it’s always the World Day of Something. But this is one of the ones I find potentially influential – especially since the motto is “Youth and Climate – Time for Action”. Couldn’t agree more.

(“Young ambassadors” from the Climate Change College finding out about climate change and its effect on the Inupiat in Arctic Alaska.)

UN Secretary-General put out a message (how many of you young visitors to this blog have actually seen it?) calling on young people to come up with brilliant ideas and put a major effort into securing the future of the planet. Of course you don’t need to be the head of the UN to see that the younger generation are going to have a tough job on their hands dealing with the effect of climate change caused by human behaviour.
I’d like to use World Youth Day as an opportunity to draw your attention once again to some of the young folk who are concerned about the climate and running their own projects to do something about it.
Here’s a link to the Climate Change College.
Youth in Action to Save the Climate
There’s some great new stuff on the website. Some of these dedicated young professionals will also be making an (audio-) appearance on our environment programme this week, talking about their projects.Young Climate Activists on Living Planet
And another effect of these “World Something”-Days is that our current affairs colleagues are also running a story about all this.
Youth for Climate Campaign on Newslink