Naperville-based nonprofit student film to be shown at UN climate conference

Keshav Arun was used to seeing climate change through the lens of his own community.

The Waubonsie Valley High School senior knew about rising temperatures and smog caused by pollution. But climate change took on a different urgency when he started exchanging videos with students in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands.

“Fishing is such a big way of life in their country. … (I)n recent years, they’ve seen a decline in the amount of fish that they’re able to get,” Arun said, noting that the decrease is tied to factors like rising ocean temperatures.

Those exchanges gave Arun a perspective on climate change that he was missing through studying the issue at home.

“It doesn’t stop being real just because you’re not the one living it yet, and it’s going to take all of us to fight it,” he said.

He is not alone in that sentiment. Arun was one of seven interns working with Naperville-based nonprofit Accelerate Climate Solutions this past summer, studying air and water quality in the western suburbs while students from the Solomon Islands did the same for their community.

Their work culminated in a short documentary, “Understanding Life on the Frontlines of Climate Change: An International Youth Science Citizen Collaboration,” which will be shown at the 2026 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Antalya, Turkey, in November. The conference brings together government leaders from around the world to work together to stop the worst effects of climate change.

Accelerate Climate Solutions’ video was also added to the United Nations Youth Climate Report, an online database of over 1,000 youth-produced documentaries highlighting local impacts of climate change. Their documentary is the first one in the database from Naperville and the second video for the Solomon Islands.

“It just feels incredible to know that the students from the Solomon Islands and then the students from Naperville (and) Aurora as well … their stories are going to be shared on such a large scale,” said Ani Apresyan, a junior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has been working with Accelerate Climate Solutions since 2023.

The nonprofit has been working with students from a school in Honiara for the past two summers. Apresyan had previously made videos for the nonprofit, but she said this documentary felt different since she was weaving together work from both local students and students abroad.

“When we realized we had so much good content from the interaction that we’ve been having with the Solomon Islands students over the past two summers, we decided to turn that into a new video that was more highlighting life on the front lines of climate change,” Apresyan said.

The Naperville and Aurora students spent much of their summer studying air and water quality issues in their own community, which was highlighted in the film.

Using a climate vulnerability index, the air quality team identified areas of Aurora that were vulnerable to poor air quality but lacked monitoring equipment.

The group found that neighborhoods near the BNSF Railway tracks were particularly at risk and are working to install air quality sensors in those communities. Currently, they are pursuing a grant through Aurora’s Youth Climate Action Fund to make their aspirations a reality.

Meanwhile, another group of interns examined water quality in the west branch of the DuPage River. They compared their data with previous data collected by The Conservation Foundation and found that rising temperatures may significantly affect acidity levels in the river, which can have long-term consequences for the river’s ecosystems.

The students in Honiara were studying the similar environmental issues around air and water quality. But unlike their counterparts in Illinois, many of them have already experienced the impact of climate change first hand. That includes everything from eroded shore lines due to rising sea levels to longer periods of extreme heat.

“I’m Armenian, so I’ve talked to a lot of people in Armenia about climate change, and they also seem to have this approach where climate change impacts them maybe for a couple of weeks throughout the year super severely, and then they’re able to put it on the back burner for the rest of the year,” Apresyan said.

But for students in the Solomon Islands, the impacts are a daily reality, she said. Whole communities have had to relocate and lost crucial crops like taro and sweet potatoes as a result of their changing environment.

“Most of the country is volcanic islands, so there are higher elevations,” said Catherine Clarkin, Accelerate Climate Solutions executive director. “But the thing is that there’s traditional land ownership so it’s not that easy to just pick up and move from one place to another because that’s not your traditional land.”

In the documentary, Shaniella Suluone, a student from Honiara, said her community built concrete sea walls to try to alleviate some of the damage from the waves and rising sea levels. Her community has also been involved in relocation planning and had to consider planting alternative crops to adapt to their new reality, she said.

“I think those anecdotes were really impactful for all of the interns at (Accelerate Climate Solutions),” Apresyan said.

For some students, like Arun, the experience is encouraging them to work in sustainability in the future. But the whole experience taught all of the interns a possibly even more important lesson.

“They understand that they have the power to create a better world,” Clarkin said. “If they put their minds and their time to work, they can make a difference, and they’re doing that.”

cstein@chicagotribune.com