Youth take the lead at climate summit

Young people from around the world are taking leadership on climate change, as evidenced by the award-winning projects, commercial solutions and films honored at the Global Youth Summit on Net-Zero Future, or the "Climate x Summit". 

The summit was held by the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate, which was formed in Davos during the World Economic Forum in 2019 and includes 15 prestigious universities from around the world, including Yale University and Tsinghua University. 

The summit featured a climate research competition, an ActNowFilm project and a mini-hackathon for climate change solutions. The competition alone received 150 project submissions from graduate students at over 50 universities in 12 nations. 

The awards ceremony was held simultaneously in the China Corporate Pavilion of the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the United Kingdom, and at Tsinghua in Beijing on Friday. 

Qiu Yong, president of Tsinghua, conveyed his gratitude toward GAUC member universities and partners for their support of GAUC and the Climate x Summit.

"This decade is an extremely important period in the history of humanity, as it will determine whether we can achieve a carbon-neutral future. Young people play a vital role in achieving this goal," Qiu was quoted as saying in the release. 

Nicolas Stern, chair of the GAUC Academic Committee and founding chair of the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, emphasized the meaning of the theme of the Summit, "Climate x", according to Tsinghua. 

"The subject matter," he said. "We know the success of nature, biodiversity and health depends on the climate. And the success of acting on climate depends on the progress in other areas."

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, spoke highly of the host of the Climate x Summit in his speech. "GAUC is a network to exchange our best ideas with one another to get smarter, faster at the scale and speed of climate change and other shared global challenges," he said.

Climate x Summit is a collective endeavor by GAUC's 15 member universities, with the strategic partnership of the COP26 Universities Network, a growing group of around 80 universities in the UK, the host country of the COP26.