Renata Koch Alvarenga is a member of Technology17, a partnership between Samsung and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that empowers younger folks driving progress on the 17 Global Goals.
Since 2020, the initiative has supported Young Leaders worldwide with Samsung Galaxy expertise, mentorship and networking alternatives to amplify their tales and advance options throughout all 17 Global Goals.
When devastating floods submerged her house state in Brazil, Renata Koch Alvarenga questioned whether or not her work was making a distinction. Instead of retreating, she doubled down, launching an bold program to arrange girls and youth for the local weather disaster forward.
The 17 Global Goals check with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a common name to motion to finish poverty, defend the planet and guarantee prosperity for all by 2030. They cowl interrelated areas equivalent to high quality schooling, gender equality, clear water and sanitation, reasonably priced and clear power, local weather motion, life on land and under water, amongst others.
The pictures nonetheless hang-out her. In May 2024, the state of Rio Grande do Sul confronted the worst flooding in its historical past, submerging Renata Koch Alvarenga’s hometown of Porto Alegre below record-breaking floodwaters. Nearly 600,000 folks have been displaced, streets disappeared, and the airport remained closed for months.
▲ The 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, affected almost 2.four million folks and brought about widespread injury throughout 478 municipalities, together with Porto Alegre, proven right here.
“My heart was definitely breaking,” she recollects. “I saw so many places that I grew up going to, such as parks and museums, destroyed.”
What occurred in Brazil displays a rising international menace. Climate change is heating oceans and shifting rainfall patterns, intensifying excessive climate occasions like floods. By 2100, coastal flood danger is predicted to extend fivefold, threatening greater than 70 million folks worldwide, in response to UNDP.
After years of local weather advocacy and academic outreach, the devastation — a few of it within the very communities Renata had labored to guard — left her questioning if her efforts have been sufficient. “I like to say that I’m a climate optimist and always like to see the glass half full, but that was a key moment in which it was very hard to keep being an optimist,” she says. “It was very hard to keep going.”
For Renata, the selection turned clear: give in to doubt or double down on her mission.
Discovering Climate Justice
Renata’s path to local weather activism started in school when she obtained the chance to attend COP21 — the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties — held in Paris in 2015, the place world leaders negotiated the landmark Paris Agreement. “I saw multiple diplomats say, ‘I don’t really understand why we’re talking about gender. This has nothing to do with climate change,’” she says.
This dismissive response sparked one thing inside her. Renata’s research had proven that the local weather disaster impacts folks in another way primarily based on gender and financial standing — with girls usually going through the harshest penalties whereas being excluded from decision-making. This imbalance lies on the coronary heart of local weather justice. According to UN Women, by 2050, local weather change could push as much as 158 million extra girls and women into excessive poverty, in comparison with 16 million extra males and boys.
Renata left COP21 decided to alter issues.
▲ Inspired by what she witnessed in Paris, Renata labored to create pathways for marginalized voices in local weather advocacy.
Leveraging Technology for Impact
Following years of advocacy and research, Renata based EmpoderaClima, a local weather and gender advocacy and schooling group with a easy precept: data is empowerment, and…
