For free real-time breaking news alerts sent directly to your inbox sign up to our breaking news email
Sign up for our free email newsletter
Sign up for our free email newsletter
Young people attending the United Nations climate talks should be very angry. He had lost a loved one and gone to school for months. He has lost his family home and farm and his connection to his family’s homeland.
But he did not lose hope. not yet.
“It has become very exhausting for me to be the poster child,” said Marinel Ubaldo, who at the age of 16 has watched two supersized typhoons destroy entire communities in the Philippines. There is no school to return to, because there is no school to look for. Now 27, COP29 will be the sixth time attending the summit where leaders discuss the future they will inherit.
“I feel very pessimistic, but I will be sure that this COP can provide more clarity,” he said.
His pessimism is not without reason. There are fewer leaders this year, against a backdrop of uncertainty over climate change in key countries such as the US and Germany. While many young people want to protest, this will be the third COP in an authoritarian country with tighter controls on protests and speech. And for many of the young people most affected by extreme climates, it is simply difficult and expensive to attend the conference.
“We have a constant challenge to have a youth forum with a space at the edge of the decision-making room,” said Felipe Paullier, assistant secretary-general for youth affairs at the UN youth office. That is why the UN has sought to institutionalize the role of youth in climate talks, he said.
And climate change has a disproportionate impact on children around the world. Growing bodies have a harder time handling extreme heat, which also leads to premature births and malnutrition in children, said UNICEF assistant secretary-general Kitty van der Heijden.
“We’re just not doing enough for the children of this world. We’re failing the children,” he said.
All of which means that young people feel the burden of speaking out about climate change more than ever before. And many who came to the COP, and even some who did not, said they felt tired — weighed down by the knowledge that year after year, they showed to talk and did not have much to show. that. This is the third year in a row that predicted global warming has not improved.
“I think for a lot of young people from climate-vulnerable countries, it’s not really like an option” to talk about climate change, said Raaia Fathimath Sharif, 20, from the Maldives.
Sharif’s grandfather migrated south to the capital of the small island nation, so he never had the chance to see what his home island was like. Growing up, after he learned about sea level rise, he had nightmares about the island sinking. He would wake up crying.
“How can I focus on other things when my island, when my country is at risk?” he asked.
A focus that brings many young people to the table even if they question their faith in the possibility that international negotiations can achieve real change. At the fourth COP, 15-year-old Francisco Vera Manzanares, from Colombia, called the UN summit a “very difficult space” to be in. institutions that are most needed to maintain the goals that require global cooperation to reach.
“People listen to children. But, for example, it’s different (listening) than listening,” he said.
That is why he hopes that more adults will help children meaningfully to support themselves in a crisis where they have the most to lose – and the most to save.
“This is our right. It is our future. This is our gift,” he said.
___
Follow Melina Walling on X, formerly Twitter, @MelinaWalling.
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropy, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
