Just over a month has passed since the close of COP28, the 28th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and as a sabbatical officer lucky enough to attend there’s been a lot to think about.
Plenty of reporting and scrutiny has focussed on the major outcomes and world leaders that attended, but far less reported about were the other 70,000 or so participants and observers engaged in the side events, workshops, panel discussions, and pavilions that populated the Dubai Expo City for 2 weeks.
My focus in going to the conference was on what progress was being made in youth and student engagement, both at the international and local levels.
As a young person, YOUNGO (the Youth NGOs constituency within the UNFCCC) is my main route into the climate conversation. YOUNGO plays a crucial role in advocating for the inclusion of youth perspectives in climate change policies and decisions, holds the UN Conference of Youth, and coordinates writing the Global Youth Statement.
Even though COP28’s “Youth Climate Champion” role will now be carried forward to future conferences, high-level interactions between YOUNGO representatives and policy makers this year seemed, on the most part, tokenistic. Demands for immediate action, a just transition, and intergenerational equity have not been met with tangible change. Even the Youth & Education Leaders Event, where the Global Youth Statement was presented to the COP Presidency, only allowed young people to talk for around 5 minutes of the hour-long plenary.
This paints a sadly unsurprising and grim image of youth engagement at COP. Before leaving for Dubai, one of the main messages I had received from students at UCL was that they felt they couldn’t engage at COP, that the space wasn’t ‘for’ them. It was utterly relieving to then discover that outside of the huge plenaries and COP Presidency events, there were incredible examples of excellent student engagement happening in small pockets across the conference.
From party pavilions explicitly supporting and encouraging students and young people at events, to panels hosted by and for youth, there are many great instances of students and young people leading discussions at COP. Climate is often just the beginning at these events – from my experience at Week 1, discussions with young leaders and activists are often intersectional, holistically covering issues related to education, biodiversity, food, health, disability, equity, indigenous rights, and climate together.
It is often grassroots projects that are making tangible progress in local constituencies and effectively engaging young people. Whether COP28 was a suitable stage for scaling up and replicating these projects, and the extent to which they influenced core negotiations, is unclear. However, if anything can be taken away from these events, it is their ability to foster agency rather than apathy by centring a diverse range of young voices.
The COP Presidency, as well as universities and student unions, have much to learn from these pockets of engagement, where students and young people are not framed as ‘leaders of tomorrow’ but treated as the leaders they are today. We must engage student representatives in not just sustainability strategies, but high-level decision-making across the board, and prioritise holistic and intersectional solutions. Our sustainability training and education needs to reflect our diverse student bodies, and our climate interventions and actions must not only be research-focussed, but student-led.