Young people at COP: where to find your place?

For this blog entry, I wanted to share a little bit of the experience of COP on the ground. Indeed, each COP is unique, but it does have tons of similarities – and by your second COP you will be able to notice that. I have been thinking about what I should bring to this blog post that might be most useful to young people taking this class and going to COP or any student reading these blog posts. I have also taken a sneak peek into previous blog posts and realized that there is no single COP experience.

In my previous blog post, I told a little bit about what YOUNGO is (If you haven’t read it, take a look https://sites.duke.edu/duketotheunfccc/2024/11/24/salam-from-baku-the-stadium-is-set-for-a-196-countries-battle/). Being at COP can feel like you are out of the place because we are 1) young and 2) inexperienced (if you are attending for the first time and doesn’t know what the heck is the EAU dialogue). I found my place with other young people at COP in YOUNGO (hint: it is okay to be young and inexperienced). From week 1, I sat and participated (almost) every day at the spokes sections from YOUNGO that happen at 9 am every day. YOUNGO has working groups for all the issues being negotiated at COP and I had the chance to join them and learn about the development of the topics as days went by. I also had the chance to learn about opportunities to contribute with YOUNGO, like speaking opportunities and statement writing.

YOUNGO is far from perfect, but it feels like home. At the end of the day or whenever I felt overloaded or lost, I would stop by the Children and Youth Pavilion and stay until YOUNGO’s daily policy brief. I always found the friends I made since COY19 there.

By this time (end of week 2), I don’t think I can give a run down on all the things I have done. But I do want to touch on my work with WWF International. I supported them by following mainly Loss and Damage, a topic that I was somewhat familiar with, but learned deeply about during my first week. I was lucky to have such a great client who gave me all the support to understand and follow negotiations. But you can also find similar support inside YOUNGO as I have cited before. If I can give you any advice about COP, choose a negotiation track to follow, find young people following it through YOUNGO, and sit in at least one negotiation section every day.

Networking and the events in the pavilions are important and interesting, but this is something you can explore the whole week and day and in other places that are not necessarily inside COP. This is your chance to truly understand what is going on at COP behind closed doors, how decision-making is being made, and what are the contributions and strengths of each party. YOUNGO has a seat at the table of these negotiations as well and, as a young person, you can help shape these discussions.

I have spent most of my time at COP with these young people when not sitting in the cafeteria with WWF negotiators. Even when I was following loss and damage for my client, I was still sitting with my fellow young people from YOUNGO and learning with them. Since COP28, this has been my safe space for exploring COP. And there is nothing that makes me more hopeful than surrounding myself with these people.