How COP keeps youth voices at bay and why it needs to change
24-year-old climate activist Ayisha Siddiqa reflects on her experience at COP26 and explains how the UNFCCC can become more accessible to young women. (Courtesy of Ayisha Siddiqa)
24-year-old climate activist Ayisha Siddiqa reflects on her experience at COP26 and explains how the UNFCCC can become more accessible to young women.
I was very excited to attend the 2021 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. As the founder of Polluters Out — a campaign calling on COP to end its relationship with fossil fuel companies and ensure funding from big oil does not influence the outcome of climate talks — I’d hoped my presence at the biggest climate conference in the world would help bring visibility to these efforts. I planned to call on leaders to act on young women’s and Indigenous activists’ demands.
I had no idea that COP excludes young climate activists like me at every opportunity.
Let’s start with costs. Every year, businesses surrounding the COP venue hike prices in anticipation of the conference, meaning flights, housing, transportation and food are ridiculously expensive — especially if you come from a country like Pakistan and operate on rupees. To save money, I ended up sharing a room at a hotel an hour away from the conference with my friend Xiye Bastida. While in Glasgow, I could only afford one meal a day. Travel costs alone prohibit many young activists from attending COP, especially those from lower-income countries.
“I had no idea that COP excludes young climate activists like me at every opportunity.”
At the conference itself, as an activist with an observer’s badge, I’d hoped to be witness to negotiation procedures and outcomes within COP26. But civil society members with observer’s badges can only access an area of COP called the Blue Zone, which is essentially just corridors. A lot of the youth who attend COP26 do so because we’ve done extensive research into climate change and have been on the front lines of climate justice campaigns for years. We want decision-makers to hear our messages because we have lived the climate crisis, and know best what legislative measures actually work. But if you have an observer’s badge like me, your interaction with the people making the decisions is very limited; they are not even going through the same doors as you. Walking around the Blue Zone, I realized that the conference was heavily policed. There is more security at this U.N. event than there is at an airport. There are barriers and barriers behind the barriers and security checkpoints manned by guards just to enter the conference. They make it extremely difficult for a member of civil society to enter any of the events — especially for people with disabilities.
In terms of the participants, it seemed that there were more lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry at COP26 than young people. Inside the Blue Zone, a massive billboard circling the stadium advertised COP26’s corporate sponsors — Microsoft, Nestlé and other petrochemical, plastic and fossil fuel companies. And in the center: a huge blue and green globe. The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. There were also big screens where we could watch speeches and panels take place in real time, but the entire time I was at COP26 I didn’t see one young person from the Global South on that screen. Standing there, I was aware that the decision-makers I was trying to reach were holding climate talks in the same building as me. But as I stood in the Blue Zone with other youth climate activists, I realized I may as well have been at home, watching from my TV.
These actions on the part of the conference are a deliberate attempt to exclude youth activists from proceedings. If young people don’t know what’s happening inside negotiation rooms at COP, we cannot take action to dissent. In Glasgow, leaders were debating capping the international limit of global warming at 2 degrees Celsius instead of 1.5 degrees Celsius — a change which would disproportionately endanger island states. But we didn’t find out in time that this conversation was happening, so we couldn’t plan specific actions or speak about it at our strike in Glasgow. Lack of transparency and access prevented young people from sharing their frustration and anger, which could have been able to change the policy in real time.
“I spent a lot of my time with people who understand what it is to experience real loss and fear of extinction — and who have come out the other end more determined than ever to carry on their activism. Their resilience and remarkable hope inspired me to continue my work in spite of everything.”
All of this has a demoralizing effect on young activists in attendance; burnout was extremely common among my friends. No one prepares you for what it’s like as a young person to be present at an event with that magnitude of power. People like Jeff Bezos, who’ve built their entire empires on exploitation of other humans, are there in the same room as you, making speeches and influencing policy to suit their interests. I could feel my spirit sink as I watched them speaking into microphones and projected onto TV screens, thinking about the hundreds of thousands of people protesting outside, fighting so hard to make their voices heard.
COP26 was not the event I hoped it would be. But during the summit, I found hope in my community of tribal and Indigenous youth from around the world who, like me, had attended the conference in hopes of affecting real change. At the end of each day, I actually looked forward to going home and debriefing with my roommate Xiye. Whether we were all getting food together or having a listening session with elders, it was events outside the conference that brought me back to reality and filled me with hope. Many politicians at COP can tell you about carbon emissions and percentages, but they have not really lived the climate crisis. I spent a lot of my time with people who understand what it is to experience real loss and fear of extinction — and who have come out the other end more determined than ever to carry on their activism. Their resilience and remarkable hope inspired me to continue my work in spite of everything.
This month COP27 begins in Egypt, and already the patterns from previous conferences are repeating. In October 2022, COP27 announced that it had accepted sponsorship money from Coca-Cola, one of the world’s top plastic polluters. Costs for hotel rooms in Sharm El-Sheikh, the beach town where the conference is being held, originally spiked to prohibitive levels for most civil society members. And activists around the world have raised concerns about Egypt’s human rights record.
But I have decided to go to COP27. It would be remiss of me not to attend and fight for the causes I believe in — not just as a climate activist, but as a young tribal woman.
“For COP27 to deliver on its promise to include youth voices in its proceedings, the UNFCCC must take steps to make the conference more accessible.”
Looking ahead, there are simple, tangible steps the UNFCCC can take to make COP live up to its mission. First, all 198 parties must sign a conflict of interest policy preventing decision-makers from accepting money from the fossil fuel industry and individuals who have contributed disproportionately to the climate crisis. Second, the UNFCCC must establish a strong financing mechanism — led by high-income nations — for delivering aid to the people and communities most affected by climate emergencies. This need for climate-change reparations is especially urgent this year as floods in my home country of Pakistan have displaced 33 million people and left billions of dollars’ worth of destruction. Lastly, for COP27 to deliver on its promise to include youth voices in its proceedings, the UNFCCC must take steps to make the conference more accessible. This means ensuring cost-covering stipends go to young women from climate-affected and marginalised communities who might otherwise be unable to attend, and allowing us to participate meaningfully in climate talks once we’re there, prioritizing our messages over those of lobbyists and politicians.
To any young women who are attending for the first time this year, here is my advice: Don’t let the COP break you. You cannot give it the power that it wants you to give it. There will be disappointments and setbacks; a country can vote against something that you’ve been working towards for years and, in one minute, it’s gone. But if you let that break you, our movement loses momentum. COP isn’t where change happens, change happens from the ground up. And our advocacy will continue long after the presidents have jetted back home.
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