It’s Getting Hot In Here

At the civil society meeting with UN Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, the extent to which the youth climate change movement can impact the UN process became truly apparent.Representing the international youth delegation, Akhmad Viko of Indonesia asked Mr. de Boer what he thought of the future role of youth in the international climate change negotiations. De Boer’s answer revealed not only an explicit interest in the further inclusion of youth (he answered that there is much more the UN can do to ensure that youth are incorporated in the process) but also an implicit interest in our message and current work.De Boer went on to discuss the speech delivered by Catherine Gauthier at the UN High-Level event on climate change in September as evidence of the kind of work that youth are doing well and need to continue doing. Others can look to YENGOs (the formal umbrella term for the youth international delegation) because of our ability to organize, strategize, and because of our fresh perspective in the negotiations that are lacking from the COP veterans.For me, this is one of many signs of the real and measurable impact of the youth movement on this process. That a speech delivered in September still resonates with the Executive Secretary of this conference, that youth groups are almost at the stage of achieving formal constituency status at the COP, and that our home delegations are finally starting to realize that they (at the very least) required to meet with us at the conference, show that we are being taken serious as a real, credible, and powerul stakeholder in the negotiations!