3 young Latin Americans fight for the environment

More and more cities have joined the marches known globally as Fridays For Future, where dozens of people have gathered in the main city squares with green signs calling for greater solutions from governments to protect the environment. This is just one of the activities that seeks to put the preservation of the environment at the center of the discussion.

The young Swedish mediatic, Greta Thunberg, has helped encourage other young people around the world to raise their voices, breaking the paradigms that young people are not heard.

They are the ones with the future in their hands and therefore they have begun to appropriate the climatic cause. Under this premise, Latin America has been determined to stand out, and cities like Santiago de Chile have been the scene of strong mobilizations. Countries like Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina have also mobilized.

These three young Latin Americans have championed the struggle for the environment, creating awareness and demanding greater sustainability from governments that benefits ecosystems.

1. Catalina Silva

The 18-year-old has seen during her life how the glaciers of Chilean Patagonia, were she was born, disappear. “I have memories of those very cold winters in which I had to go to school with snow up to my knees. But, year after year that reality began to change, there was less and less snow, ”he told BBC Mundo.

Read also: Disappearing Peruvian glaciers

Silva, who was interested in science from an early age, has dedicated her time to study amphibians, especially some specific types of Patagonia. From there, she began to become increasingly interested in the effects that human actions brought to the environment: "It is very ironic: we blame the environment when we are responsible," she said.

She has been part of various initiatives in Chile and now presented a proposal along with other activists from Latin America and the Caribbean called “1000 actions for a change”. The project, with which they participate in the UNICEF initiative, Concausa, seeks to promote environmental actions and awareness in young people. In this, they unite awareness with poverty and seeks that young people and children from rural locations are interested in science.

The owners of the project have also presented alternatives that are available to everyone to contribute a grain of sand to the conservation of the environment: not eating meat one day, minimizing the consumption of plastic, among other actions easy to perform.

Catalina Silva has mentioned her support for the actions of activist Greta Thunberg. However, he states that there are many other young people, like her and hundreds more, who are also making contributions and have not been made visible.

2. Julieta Itzovich

This Argentine is one of the most important figures of Fridays For Future in Argentina. Every Friday, hundreds of people like her gather in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires with strong messages for the government.

Itzovich was inspired by the Swedish activist, main promoter of Fridays For Future. But now, the 17-year-old Argentina has begun to appropriate the movement in Buenos Aires and is one of the most recognized faces in Argentina. “When I heard her speeches, I realized that the situation was more critical than I thought and that I needed to go out and do something now because I couldn't keep waiting. That mobilized me to go out to protest, ”Julieta said according to Argentine newspaper TN.

She has been aware of the importance of preserving the environment since she was a child, but now she has urgency that others also notice. That is why he goes every Friday to protest against the congress, so that they make existing laws for preservation work, instead of continuing to create new ones that are not fulfilled.

Also read: Climate hunters: three young women racing to help environment

3. Bruno Rodríguez

Also Argentine, he is a young man of 19 who has come as far as Greta Thunberg, the difference is that he has not been visible as much as she. He was invited by the UN to participate in the Youth Climate Summit on September 21, where he participated at the hands of Thunberg.

Rodríguez is the founder of Youth for Climate Argentina, a movement that seeks to put this cause at the center of the global public agenda. "Many times we hear that our generation must solve the problems created by the current rulers, but we will not wait passively… The time has come for us to be the leaders," he said at the UN.

The three of them carry one more flag together, that of coming from the Latin American region. The three on different occasions have mentioned how being from Latin America has made it difficult for them to raise environmental initiatives. "In Latin America, there is a lack of awareness among the population about the climate crisis. The same number of people in European countries and in Latin Americans do not move, that we are the ones who suffer the most from the consequences of climate change," said Itzovich according to EFE.

For this reason, the visibility of Latin American figures, especially taking into account their young age and large contributions, is decisive to boost the cause in favor of the environment.