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UAE: Young climate leaders voice aspirations at Abu Dhabi Pre-COP

The Youth Climate Champion has engaged with young people across the globe to ensure that their voices are integrated throughout the entire COP28 process

For the first time this year, a youth delegation of climate leaders became part of the Pre-COP event and was able to voice their aspirations and demands.

The Abu Dhabi conference, the critical final climate ministerial before COP28, saw youth representatives and COP28 Youth Climate Champion Shamma Al Mazrui discuss the Global Youth Statement (GYS) – the centrepiece youth advocacy document for the UN Climate Change Conference.

The high-level roundtable on youth ambitions led by Al Mazrui had members of various programmes, including YOUNGO, the COP28 Youth Climate Champion, Unicef advocates, the COP International Youth Climate Delegates Programme (IYCDP), and the UAE Youth Delegate Programme. While YOUNGO is the children and youth constituency of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, IYCDP is bringing 100 youth from severely climate-impacted and underrepresented communities to the COP.

Meanwhile, Al Mazrui, the Minister of Community Development, is the first-ever Youth Climate Champion with a ministerial role. The UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed also attended the event.

Al Mazrui noted that over the past year, the Youth Climate Champion has engaged with young people from across the globe to ensure that their voices are integrated throughout the entire COP28 process.

“The COP28 Presidency is committed to achieving unprecedented youth and children’s inclusion in international UN climate change negotiations. We have been diligently working on a series of initiatives to offer comprehensive support to youth at every stage of the COP process.”

At the event, YOUNGO representatives presented their recommendations to Al Mazrui, discussing various key thematic areas outlined in the GYS – a representative policy document produced annually that is built on consensus among youth, aggregating the demands, insights, expectations, and policy proposals of young individuals, youth organisations and institutions from over 150 countries.

The GYS is the result of intensive policy consultations conducted by YOUNGO, as well as from the integration of policy statements from local and regional Conferences of Youth. These have been organised by YOUNGO in collaboration with youth organisations in 110 countries in the lead-up to the global Conference of the Youth (COY18) which will take place between November 26 and 28.

The inputs received were synthesised to present clear climate policy demands across the COP28 negotiation tracks and beyond, ranging from climate mitigation and adaptation, finance, and energy, to loss and damage and climate justice. It calls for an inclusive approach to climate governance that acknowledges the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on the Global South and vulnerable communities, including youth, and underlines the need for systemic and radical action.

This year for the first time, the GYS condensed demands were presented during the Pre-COP stage instead of mid-COP as in previous COPs. This initial release will be a condensed version in UN-aligned language, to allow for parties and negotiators to have a more actionable document, at an earlier point in time. This change aims to improve the effectiveness of incorporating the requests of the youth into the negotiation process.

The event emphasises the COP28 Presidency's commitment to transparency and open dialogue by involving youth and children in all major climate policy discussions throughout the year.

The YOUNGO policy team said: “We have presented the condensed policy demands of thousands of young people that were involved in the process within the Global Youth Statement and urge parties to take action based on them during their negotiations at COP28, as they provide practical and comprehensive proposals that are actionable for the negotiation table and in the local perspective for parties. We appreciate the emphasis on youth participation by the Presidency, but for this engagement to be meaningful, they need to be integrated in the COP final outcomes.”

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