The trajectories of youth actors in earth politics. The cases of climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development

Duque, Juan Felipe [UCL] Orsini, Amandine [UCL]

Since the mid-nineties, when youth attended the first Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the number of youth actors and organizations involved in international climate negotiations has rapidly increased. Young people have also entered international arenas where issues of biodiversity loss and sustainable development are discussed: youth representation in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conferences and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) summits has become stronger in recent years. In this context, there has been an increasing number of publications on youth participation in formal earth politics. These studies have shed light on the identities, claims, and influence of youth actors who attended international negotiations, but very few have dealt with the question of youth actors’ trajectories, at the time of the negotiations and in the aftermath of these negotiations. This paper aims to fill this gap by studying the trajectories of youth participants in the UNFCCC, CBD, and SDG negotiations held in the early 2020s. In particular, we focus on four features of young actors’ trajectories: their socio-demographic characteristics, their academic backgrounds, their work experiences, and the networks/organizations they are members of. We analyze such features both at the moment of the negotiations, and afterwards. As part of a four-year project on youth in earth politics, the paper is based on data collected through web scraping, online surveys, and semi-structured interviews with youth actors conducted at various international events. The results of this paper will deepen our understanding of the profiles of youth actors involved in earth politics and how their involvement evolved over time.