Dr. Jerome L. Montemayor
Executive Director, ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity
Last week, the 58th ASEAN Day Celebration in Jakarta, Indonesia, featured a talk show titled “Living a Sustainable Life”. The show highlighted four innovative environment-related business initiatives touching on inclusivity and sustainability. Notably, these four initiatives are all led by young ASEAN citizens!
This reaffirms that the youth are not just beneficiaries of our conservation efforts. They are empowered, passionate, and innovative leaders and changemakers who can contribute to solving various social and environmental challenges.
Southeast Asia is youthful! Around a third of the region’s population, approximately 224.2 million, are young individuals aged 15 to 35. This represents the largest group of ASEAN youth and is expected to reach more than 220 million by 2038. Our youth is a powerful force that can be tapped to safeguard the region’s biodiversity, boost our climate resilience, and shape our shared future.
International Youth Day focuses on the theme “Local Youth Actions for the SDGs and Beyond” this year. As part of the celebration, the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) reiterates the importance of youth action in contributing to global goals at the grassroots level and aligning them with international commitments. More importantly, we reaffirm our longstanding commitment to include and invest in the youth as on-the-ground biodiversity conservation and restoration partners.
In 2018, the ACB launched the ASEAN Youth Biodiversity Programme (AYBP) in collaboration with the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN), the official youth constituency to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This flagship initiative aims to recognise and empower active youth involvement in biodiversity policies at the local, regional, and global levels.
Under the AYBP, the ACB and its partners have supported 62 Youth Biodiversity Leaders (YBLs). Each YBL cohort participates in a one-year fellowship that provides comprehensive capacity building, mentorship, and networking opportunities. This programme enables their involvement in biodiversity governance and enhances their youth-led conservation initiatives. In collaboration with GYBN SEA and the Hanns Seidel Stiftung (HSS), 13 YBLs have been supported and trained to represent Southeast Asian youth voices at various CBD and ASEAN meetings since 2019. These young leaders work together to raise awareness of biodiversity issues in the region through videos, webinars, infographics, social media challenges, and more. Last year, the ACB partnered with GYBN SEA and HSS to implement the “Documenting Youth Contributions to Global Goals” initiative, or the Youth Mapping Project. This study showed that ASEAN youth can contribute to all the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, especially in capacity building and raising awareness.
Through the ACB’s Youth Internships in Protected Areas programme, youth gain experience in conservation and park activities like ecotourism, restoration, and species monitoring. This builds their skills and encourages biodiversity action. Protected area managers also learn from youth, helping them see their potential and develop better engagement strategies. The ACB has engaged 37 interns in 28 protected areas across all ASEAN Member States (AMS).
The ACB also initiated the Young ASEAN Storytellers programme to tap into the youth’s creativity in conveying biodiversity stories. The first batch of 20 Young ASEAN Storytellers, representing all the AMS, use their different talents to popularise biodiversity data and information effectively through innovative forms such as podcasts, vlogs, artwork, spoken poetry, and photos, connecting better with a broader audience.
The Youth Mapping Project discussed earlier also revealed that access to appropriate funding remains the biggest challenge for youth-led projects. Under the AYBP, the Conservation Action Fund was established to support small-scale, youth-led conservation projects in ASEAN with financing of up to US$5,000 per project. Since 2023, the ACB has supported 12 youth and youth organisations financially and by providing technical support and guidance in implementing their projects. In 2023, YBL alumni from nine AMS utilised this to start or sustain their initiatives after their fellowship. In 2024, the three grantees were youth organisations focused on ecosystem restoration projects. Supported by the Conservation Action Fund, the Indonesian Invasive Species Action Network restored 2 hectares of mangrove forests, trained 30 community members in invasive species management, and planted 5,350 mangrove seedlings. On the other hand, Teens Go Green Indonesia focused on community empowerment in the Gede-Pangrango National Park Buffer Zone. Over 400 youth were engaged in conservation through workshops, a climate action camp, and tree-growing activities. Lastly, the Bukidnon Forest Stewards Project by the Salumayag Youth Collective for Forests in the Philippines trained 15 foresters from indigenous communities. It also facilitated the development of a comprehensive training kit for sustainable forest management.
These are just a few examples of how the ACB invests in the region’s youth. Guided by the shared ASEAN vision of a more inclusive and sustainable community, the ACB ensures that its initiatives include key stakeholders, especially the youth, women, Indigenous Peoples and local communities in driving biodiversity action in the region.
To say that the future begins today has been repeated numerous times and in various iterations. However, in its simplest form, this captures why the ACB invests in empowering the youth and encouraging them to be part of biodiversity and climate action now. Let us continue uniting our efforts in preparing our youth, the next generation, to become the next leaders and movers, carrying out to fruition what we have sown in them today.
Happy International Youth Day! -END
