In November, COP29 welcomed over 50,000 delegates to Baku, Azerbaijan to negotiate key themes including climate mitigation, loss and damage, climate finance, and national commitments. Among these participants were over 100 young negotiators supported by the Youth Negotiators Academy (YNA). Since its launch in 2022, YNA– co-founded by Marie-Claire Graf and Veena Balakrishnan– has trained over 400 young leaders from 63 countries through its Climate Youth Negotiator Program. With a focus on youth from the Global South, the program equips young negotiators with the skills, resources, and access necessary to navigate the complexities of climate negotiations. 

YNA’s work rests on two key pillars: training and community network building with participants learning essential skills in deal-making, consensus-building, and collective problem-solving, while also developing technical and thematic expertise to negotiate effectively for their countries. At the core of YNA’s mission is ensuring access– giving young people a seat at the table and embedding youth voices in the COP process to ensure that all countries are represented equally.

As COP29 drew to a close, we caught up with some of the young negotiators to hear their reflections and motivations for engaging in the global climate negotiations process. From the climate-gender nexus to intergenerational equity, their stories reveal the clarity, passion, and commitment that youth bring to building a more just and sustainable future.

Jervon Sands: “What gives me hope is that at COP29 I engaged with amazing young negotiators from all over. And, it was in those experiences where I felt that strong sense of community.”

Jervon was moved to enter the climate negotiations space after Hurricane Dorian devastated The Bahamas in 2019, making climate impacts “all too real” for his home country. He says, “what truly motivated me to enter this space is the struggle of my people to protect our lives, livelihoods, and cultural heritage from the climate impacts threatening our home.” Jervon views youth as essential to building solutions and bringing fresh, innovative ideas to an arena long stagnated by outdated rhetoric. While Baku’s COP29 was dubbed the “Finance COP”, Jervon emphasises a more thoughtful approach, saying, “frontline communities don’t just need money thrown at the problem. They need finance directed towards climate education, capacity building, and accessible solutions informed by their own lived experiences.”

Jervon believes a key barrier to progress at COP is the lack of a true sense of community. He critiques the process, stating, “this is not a global community coming together to discuss what’s best for the sake of that community. It’s a collection of factions, each one trying to do what’s best for itself with little to no regard for the others.” True global community is at the core of his vision for a just climate future, and he advocates that this starts with closing the generational gap between youth and older delegates. Young people, he argues, “young people should be the main group involved in this decision making process because the decisions made here affect us now, our future selves, and future young people making us the only ones truly qualified to lead this process.”

Kamori Osthananda: “Young people understand intergenerational equity. We cherish the wisdom of our ancestors and recognise the necessity to ensure a future for the forthcoming generation.”

Kamori, Thailand’s first youth climate negotiator, has witnessed firsthand how menstrual poverty is an outcome of the complex interactions and inequalities within the climate-gender nexus. Through her grassroots initiatives for women’s health equity, she is well aware of the ways in which gender is not an isolated topic, “rather a multifaceted one that intersects with socioeconomic status, race, age, disability, among other factors… and plays a role in securing an inclusive, just transition.”

For Kamori, representing Thailand at COP29 was an important opportunity to address these intersecting issues at the global level.  Through her engagement with the YNA she’s learned about effective negotiation and the importance of listening and seeking to understand other positions before pushing one’s own. In this way, youth negotiators act as bridges between the climate regime and those who will bear the consequences of the decisions being made within that regime. She emphasises the unique climate diplomacy that her generation brings, one that considers the broader picture across generations. She notes, “youth negotiators are the bridge between the climate regime and those growing up experiencing the outcomes of the regime’s decisions.” Looking ahead to COP30, Kamori stresses the importance of valuing formal and informal discussions equally, noting, “all of these dialogues count regardless of the hour.”

Wassim Dbouk: “The division surrounding many topics can only be addressed through a spirit of cooperation and compassion” 

Wassim is a negotiator from Lebanon who is determined to challenge the systemic inaction and dysfunction that has frustrated many of his peers. Equipped with a research background, Wassim has a critical perspective on the UN multilateral process and took the opportunity to enter COP’s closed rooms where the negotiations take place, with the aim of bringing fresh ideas and amplifying the voices of communities often overlooked at the table. For him, this work is about intergenerational justice and ensuring that the decisions made at COP reflect the needs and aspirations of future generations, not just those in power now.

Wassim’s focus lies at the intersection of just transitions, ocean policies, the link between climate change and peace. In particular, he is concerned with finding opportunities to stress the vulnerabilities of conflict-affected communities, whom he believes need protections and safeguards akin to those of Least Developed Countries and Small Island States. He sees the failure of past negotiations as rooted in competition and division, and advocates instead for compassion and collaboration as the foundation of meaningful progress. In addition to the different energy that youth bring to negotiations, Wassim feels that they “play a key role in activism and participating in side-events to highlight the youth’s perspective and ensure they are not overlooked in decision-making around a topic that strongly shapes their livelihoods and those of generations to come.” In his view, their participation and voices are vital for advancing intergenerational justice.

Ivonne Serna: “We’re often told we’re ‘the future,’ but the reality is we’re already here, living the consequences of climate inaction.”

Driven by a desire to understand and influence the climate negotiation space, Ivonne is committed to pushing for meaningful progress. Her approach to negotiations is shaped by her work with frontline communities in Mexico, where the impacts of climate change are “immediate and personal.” She says that youth negotiators bring urgency and a fresh perspective, challenging conventional thinking since, “[young people] are less tethered to a conventional way of thinking and are more focused on solutions that reflect the world we are working to build.” 

Ivonne is particularly focused on the Just Transition Work Program, advocating for policies that ensure the transition to a sustainable future is fair and inclusive, particularly for vulnerable groups. This includes addressing human and labor rights, gender equality, the informal sector, and the care economy, with social dialogue as a central component. She also calls for clear commitments to the 1.5°C target and a transition away from fossil fuels, stressing that “without that, everything else feels like window dressing.” 

Reflecting on what youth want out of COP, she says, “we need outcomes that are comprehensive, actionable, and rooted in justice.”