The theme for this year’s IIEM was Nature for the Next Generation, and six groups of students from the Sixth Form Centre and The Ladies’ College gave presentations on a variety of topics, from protecting the island for the future to marine life.
‘The students really are smashing it out of the park,’ said Angela Salmon, the Nature Commission’s head of operations and education.
‘I didn’t know what to expect, but with this IIEM being the theme Nature for the Next Generation, we couldn’t not have had the next generation in the room.’
Millie Pragnell and Charlotte Herschel from The Ladies’ College gave a presentation titled ‘Protecting Our Island, Nurturing Our Future’.
‘We focused on AI, technology, soil and invasion,’ said Millie.
‘There’s a lot of things that young people can do so that they can be the one to take action,’ added Charlotte.
Both study sciences at A-level and despite not contemplating environmental careers, they said that the environment was something that they were both passionate about.
‘We both want to study medicine because we think it’s really important to help people and it’s something that means a lot to us, and looking after the environment is similar to that. I think we both wanted to use our voices to make a change,’ said Charlotte.
Millie said: ‘Everyone here recognises the problem so if you make your voice heard that’s when you can actually make a difference.’
Charlie Lowey and Aleksandra Jakubowska from the Sixth Form Centre gave a presentation titled ‘Investing in Youth’.
‘Basically it was a presentation about how we can influence young people to be more involved with climate change rather than pressuring them to just deal with it and how we can get the top to influence young people from an early age,’ said Charlie.
Joe Ward and Theo Pattimore decided to do a marine-based presentation inspired by Theo’s love of sharks.
‘Ours was titled the Magnificent Marine World and is basically all things about the ocean, why it’s important to us, what’s a threat to us, and what will happen if we continue treating it how we’re treating it,’ said Theo.
‘There is lots of talk about doom and gloom, but then at the end we also talked about the good, happy stuff, like treaties being created to protect local areas, stuff like that.’