You can hardly move for VIPs at the Global Humanitarian Forum meeting on "the human face of climate change" in Geneva this week. The participants range from wealthy businessmen like Richard Branson to the president of the Maldives and the heads of practically every U.N. agency going.

But the stars of the show so far have been a group of youngsters who gave powerful testimonies about the impact of climate change on their own lives and their communities. Their stories are the reason why 300 or so eminent people have gathered in Switzerland for a rather swish two-day brainstorm in an air-conditioned luxury hotel.

As 17-year-old Rishika Das Roy from Kolkata pleaded, "Please make this conference worth its carbon footprint!" She spoke about how rising sea levels are swamping the low-lying islands and homes of India's fragile Sunderbans region, leaving growing numbers without land or enough food.

"How will we feed these environmental refugees? Will you welcome an extra 70,000 people from vanishing islands? I think not!" she said.

Indeed, how to deal with migration spurred by climate change is a sticky issue, because no one has legal responsibility to look after people displaced by environmental factors.

Later when I asked the U.N. refugee commissioner, Antonio Guterres, how he thought this issue should be dealt with, he was cautious, saying only that there was a need for an international debate to decide on the best way to protect and assist those who don't fit the traditional definition of a refugee.

I'm not sure Das Roy would have been satisfied with that answer. Nor would the other young people who joined her on the stage at the opening session on Tuesday.

Jesse Mike, a young Inuk woman from Nunavut in Canada, choked back tears while recounting how her friend had lost his life shortly after becoming a father when he went hunting on ice that was too thin for the season.

She told the story of an elder whose legs had to be amputated after falling through ice, and described how her mother's community is disposing of sewage in the sea because they've been cut off from the outside world after their bridge collapsed due to melting permafrost.

In a session later that morning on "climate justice in a shared global ecosphere", Jesse appealed to the panel to come up with some swift answers.

"I have been to a lot of conferences and there has been a lot of talk and nothing has happened yet," she said. "So I'm asking you to act right now."

James Bing N.C. III, an 18 year old student from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, cut straight to the chase.

"I am angry now," he told the assembled elite. "I have witnessed my island getting smaller and smaller. The rising sea level has taken our beaches, food and, most importantly, our soil. What have you done to it? I want my soil back!"

He ended with a battle cry used by Pacific Island warriors.

The testimony from the group of young people received a standing ovation. But whether or not the witnesses will get the immediate action they called for is far from certain.

In the session on climate justice, U.N. climate change chief Yvo de Boer said international talks on a new pact to tackle global warming were suffering from "an unbelievable - almost criminal - lack of leadership".

Afterwards, he told AlertNet he was disappointed with world leaders' reluctance to agree to mid-term goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. See the story.

Forum president and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated in the opening session that the aim of the gathering was to bring together different actors who don't normally work together, to overcome the humanitarian challenges facing the world.

So did it look like they would really do much to speed up the rather glacial nature of international progress?

To me, the first day of the two-day conference seemed a little short on new ideas (or perhaps that was because media weren't allowed to attend some of the most interesting brainstorming sessions on themes like climate change and conflict, food security, the role of insurance and innovative financing for adaptation).

What shone through was a clear focus on the need for justice in the climate debate (that rich polluters have the responsibility to assist those most affected by their carbon profligacy), and support for the idea (proposed by the president of the Maldives) that environmental security should be treated as a human right.

On the lighter side, one moderator suggested everyone at big meetings like this should stop wearing wool jackets so the air conditioner could be switched off.

And development economist Jeffrey Sachs invited Richard Branson to venture into solar electricity generation in Africa's Sahel region, under the brand "Virgin Desert". He also argued that an international carbon tax would work better than an emissions trading system.

Sachs made an impassioned plea for climate change not to be pigeon-holed as a problem that affects only marginalised communities in remote areas, reminding the audience of the current drought in California and floods in the west of the United States.

"It is important not to take the view that this is about the poor - because if we do, it won't get solved," he said. "This is an issue about the whole world, and we need commitments from everybody."

At the end of the day, delegates were asked to write down their name and favourite climate change "solution" on a piece of paper, before handing it in.

And when James Bing was asked to repeat his war cry, it came as a humbling reminder that even they - some of the world's most influential people - remain some way off mobilising the level of political will needed to answer the young participants' call for immediate action.

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