Young activists are key figures of the climate movement. So much has been self-evident ever since Greta Thunberg sat outside the steps of the Swedish parliament during school hours in August 2018 and galvanised others from her generation to follow suit in the international movement of Fridays for Future.
But beyond symbolic power, can young people actually sway the outcome of the United Nations’ climate negotiations? A regular attendee of COPs, I decided to research that question after becoming increasingly disillusioned with their inability to create political momentum.
I started this work at a time when media attention for youth-led movements such as Fridays for Future and Youth for Climate was at its peak. But what of it in the two last COPs, COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022 and COP28 in Dubai in 2023?
Russian dolls
What makes a COP a success or a failure is debatable.
Some focus on the political pledges that were made at the end of the negotiations, based on what the state parties were able to agree on that year. In Dubai, for example, Member States reached an historic agreement on a loss and damage fund designed to compensate the global south for extreme weather events. For the first time too, the end of fossil fuels was explicitly mentioned in the text. But others were bitterly disappointed, citing the absence of new financial commitments and a number of gaps in the text.
A third group felt that the negotiations represented only a tiny part of the objectives of a COP. In their view, these events play a crucial role in bringing together the climate change community – or at least the part of it privileged enough to make the trip. This annual social occasion is necessary, they feel, to share knowledge, improve practices, raise awareness of emerging issues not yet addressed in the negotiations themselves, and forge links and collaborations across the world.