The Center for Urban and Regional Planning for Postgraduate Studies at the University of Baghdad organized a scientific symposium (The Effects of Current and Future Climate Change on Children and Youth) in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The symposium aimed to adopt sustainable behavior and address climate change after keeping pace with global developments, mitigating, and adapting to climate change in the future, in addition to the importance of youth participation in addressing climate issues and changing collective behavior after spreading the concept of greening, especially in Iraqi universities, and spreading the concepts of partnerships between the public and private sectors.
The Dean of the Center, Prof. Dr. Karim Hassan Alwan, delivered his research paper, which shed light on the global and humanitarian challenges around climate change and its environmental repercussions, in conjunction with the trend to adopt sustainability concepts according to well-studied scientific foundations concerned with greening and environmentally friendly areas. In the same context, UNICEF, represented by the Director of its Planning Department, Klaus Johansson, in his speech during the seminar, considered the importance of supporting the university through scientific and applied research related to planning directions for environmental sustainability after analyzing and adapting to the climate situation of children, in addition to the role of youth and adolescents in their awareness campaigns to promote sustainable behavior for all, spread the culture of green environment and invest in clean energy.
As for the recommendations that came out of the symposium, the focus was on the need to establish the Climate Change Committee within the framework of the University of Baghdad and under the supervision of the Center for Urban and Regional Planning, provided that the research and technical orientation stresses on clean energy, and to benefit from UNICEF’s support for graduate students’ research in planning to mitigate climate change after providing the mother university and the center with research titles needed by UNICEF and benefiting from its outputs and possibly applying them on the ground, through the conclusion of scientific agreements and research partnerships between the university and the organization as well as holding workshops, seminars and joint scientific conferences.
Notably, the symposium included a tree planting campaign carried out by members of UNICEF, as well as representatives of some ministries, in addition to the participation of the Assistant Rector for Scientific Affairs, Prof. Dr. Marwan Abdul Hamid, in that campaign.
