Sara Svensson and Anne Walraven

Monday, 26 January 2009 12:06

Why they are cool: Sara Svensson from Sweden and Anne Walraven from the Netherlands are the European Youth Advisors to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Together with their fellow advisors, they counsel UNEP on better ways of engaging young people in its work and represents youth in international environmental negotiations.

Sara Svensson has been a member or the Youth Advisory Council for two years and is the vice chair and project officer of Youth and Environment Europe (YEE), a federation of 60 youth environmental organizations in 30 countries in Europe. Having been involved in numerous environment organisation, projects and campaigns, Sara’s latest venture is called Climate Action Factories, which she runs out of Berlin together with 20 other young climate activists. In the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December, Sara will take part in the UNFCCC negotiations in Bonn, Bangkok and Barcelona and will travel to by train across the world, stopping along the way to raise awareness and spread information about climate change and to arrange events with local youth movements.

Find out more about the Climate Action factories here

Follow Sara's 100 days of climate campaigning on her blog.

Anne Walraven studies Environmental Resource Management in Amsterdam and has been active in several environment projects. She has volunteered for Solar Generation International, worked on a large Dutch research project focusing on the impact of climate change to urban coastal areas worldwide and been president of Foundation Students In Free Enterprise. Anna’s latest initiative, new internet portal called bigmamma, which will bring together young people worldwide who work on sustainable development, climate change and environment, will be presented at the UNEP youth conference Tunza.

Read more about bigmamma

Tunza Youth conference

Both Sara and Anna will be at the Tunza Youth Conference that kicks off in Daejeon, Korea, on 17 August.  The Conference will bring together 750 participants comprising 550 children and their chaperones, and 200 youth from 106 countries.

Read more about the conference here.

Find out more about Tunza.