Respected & Honourable Prime Minister General Prayuth Oncha,
I am Aushim Merchant, representing Thailand at the One Young World Summit 2015.
Climate change threatens to not only destroy local farming and coastal communities, but drown island nations to the extent of even flooding our own capital city, Krungthep Mahanakorn, with documented rising sea levels.
COP 21 is our chance to set things straight, to both pioneer and lead by example, that as a nation of 64 million people, we stand committed. This is not just our responsibility but our moral duty to fix the mistakes of the past, and to create a cleaner, greener and sustainable future for the generations ahead.
My hope, a hope that is shared amongst the youth of our nation, is that you as our head of state, will take decisive and bold steps during the Paris conference scheduled for December, this year. Showcase Thailand’s resolve and it’s will to tackle climate change by committing to cut our level of carbon emissions by half through to 2030 and make clean energy a norm.
We, in Thailand have innovative solutions such as the Zero Baht shop, where recyclables are exchanged for food, or Project Saleng to effectively introduce segregation of waste, recyclables
& non-recyclables in households and efforts to implement large scale solutions at landfill sites to convert non recyclable plastic waste to high quality crude oil and clean electricity that has been designed out of our local ecosystem with zero emissions, is environment friendly which can mitigate certain major contributing factors of Climate Change.
We, in Thailand are also open to and willing to adopt and implement other best practices from around the world that will help us meet the targets that we have agreed upon but we need to take a stand unitedly and begin by setting ourselves a realistic and an achievable target.
If we don't start today, we will not be left with a tomorrow! Thank you.
