COP27: This is what young climate leaders said
Global youth called upon business leaders and policymakers to address the climate crisis at COP27. Image: REUTERS/Emilie Madi
- Young climate leaders arrived at COP27, the UN climate summit, with calls for more action from business leaders and policymakers.
- COP27 marked the first time that young people were given their own dedicated pavilion.
- Here's what they were talking about on the ground in Sharm el-Sheikh.
For the first time, youth were provided with a dedicated space at COP27 to host dialogues and discussions aimed at accelerating global climate action. Leaders from around the world gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for the UN's climate summit, to design and implement climate policies.
Here's what young climate leaders had to say on the ground at the COP27 Youth and Children pavilion:
Indigenous people, local communities, young people, women and girls, should be leaders of climate action and not victims of climate policies.
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Young engineers are driving innovation and driving change. Young engineers have been responsible for many of the inventions over the past century. They are the driving force behind solutions to climate change. Both from a mitigation perspective, adaptation and resilience perspective.
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For me, victory (at COP27) would be if I have the youth coming together with knowledge on what our goals are. I see a lot of activists and sometimes I’m quite concerned that they don’t understand the COP processes. If you do understand the COP processes, then you will know how to manoeuvre your way and get your result out of that.
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There are many top priorities (at COP27) because climate change is a cross-cutting problem. It doesn’t work if you fix something, and you don’t fix the other. A slow small progress in all the priority items is better than having a big progress on one item lifting the others.
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My main agenda for this COP is to bring more finance to youth-led climate justice initiatives. If this COP is the COP of implementation, then we do need to bring money to fund those climate justice initiatives.
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It's great to see food pavilions at COP for the first time. It doesn't matter if we do everything perfectly on energy and other sectors, if we fail to address food we won't be successful.
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