The office of Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Franciscans Africa (JPIC-FA) based in Nairobi- Kenya have been leading people of Faith and Youth on promoting climate justice and restoring Biodiversity Loss.
A part from supporting local communities in taking action at grassroots level, JPIC-FA team has made great contribution in the global discussion on Convention on Biological Diversity.
At global and regional action, the office of JPIC-FA has been part of Fossil Free Campaigns on “Save Virunga and Congo Basin” in DRC and “Stop EACOP” that connect Uganda and Tanzania.
In 2021, JPIC-FA was the main organization that took part Africa, Caribbean and Pacific, Multilateral Environment Agreement (ACP MEAs) Programme, an Africa youth dialogue aiming to reframing the proposed Concept on Biological Diversity (CBD) what resulted to the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) that was approved at COP15 last year at Mont Real in Canada. Among 35 youth that were part of the program , 26 are JPIC-FA members from Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania.
The ACP MEAs 3 supported on building awareness and capacities of the youth on issues of environmental governance and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). First of all, the youth engagement was on issues related to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since the Convention was discussing finalization of a ten-year global biodiversity framework, being negotiated by 196 countries. The engagement with youth focused on how to enhance the understanding of issues related to CBD, its mandate and what it does, the discussions under the global biodiversity framework, followed by specific engagement on providing inputs, from youth perspective, for the framework.
After the youth worked in groups on tree thematic, six interesting reports came out of their work and was published by UNEP.
The above youth reports give you the significant youth reasoning on what can work best in regard to Global Biodiversity Framework. The use of social media, consideration of indigenous communities, important ideas in resource mobilization for GBF support and especially use of the Ecological Debt between Global North and Global South that was inspired from Laudato Si Encyclical letter by Pope Francis.
As JPIC-FA and Franciscans in the world we are happy that the GBF was approved by members states at Montreal in Canada during COP15 and we are proud to see that in the GBF there is a hand of our young Franciscans representing the voices of youth in Africa.
