Dear IYPF members

Please read the following starting point for discussion on an IYPF Climate Strategy and post your comments, ideas, etc. for inclusion in the Strategy.

Cameron and the IYPF Staff Team

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IYPF Takes Up Climate Challenge

In 2007, IYPF has expanded its memberships to include both the Zero Emissions Network (http://zeroemissionnetwork.org.au) and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (www.youthclimatecoalition.org). These memberships reflect the importance of global warming and the need for everyone – including organisations – to work out what they need to be doing to tackle the immense challenge of avoiding catastrophic climate change over the next 4 or 5 decades.

So what can the IYPF do as an organisation to reduce its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions? What are the ‘big emitter activities’ of organisations? How do we get our net emissions to zero or beyond by 2020?

We want to hear your ideas and thoughts to help us develop a comprehensive IYPF strategy for address the climate challenge. Send your contributions to climate@iypf.org. We will publish ideas in future newsletters.

Some initial thoughts on an IYPF climate strategy:

o We don’t have an office that uses energy, involves people using transport to get too and from work, paper printing, etc. so this is a good thing

o Given the ‘virtual’ nature of our organisation, where our volunteer Directors and staff use their own or work computers, energy, etc., do we need to include measures of these things in to our emissions? How would we do that?

o Perhaps our biggest ‘emission’ activity would be flights related to the organisations’ activities, especially people flying to attend our International Young Professionals Summits (we had one in 2001, one in 2004, and will have another in 2008) – how do we justify this? Buying carbon credits to offset the flights is an easy enough proposition – you just have to pay – but this is really ‘less bad’ and not ‘good’.

o With the 2004 IYPS, we were very focused on convening a ‘sustainable summit’ and will be doing so again for the 2008 event – looking at food and drink sourcing, waste, energy, water, etc. IYPF should develop a clear set of guidelines for events that it organises or supports in terms of minimising environmental impact – perhaps even going further to raise money and invest in activities that mean our events have a net positive carbon and environmental impact