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?
