I interviewed UN youth climate advisor Joice Mendez on water, climate activism, and youth power
(Photo courtesy of Mehek Khandru and UNICEF)
20-year-old Mehek Kandru, a college student from California, reflects on her chat with UN Youth Climate Advisor Joice Mendez on all things climate and youth activism.
With droughts, floods, and fires making headlines globally, water has become the face of today’s climate crisis. Back in September, flooding across Brazil's Rio Grande de Sul destroyed homes and killed over 30 people. Last March, drought struck across Argentina, leaving farmers with an estimated loss of 50 million tons of grain. The larger region is home to the Paraná Basin, Iguazú River, and Guarani Aquifer, some of South America’s largest sources of water, however, abundance has not prevented conflict or protected the area from the global climate crisis.
Last summer, I sat down with Joice Mendez to discuss her work and hopes for the planet. In March, she was appointed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to serve as one of his Youth Advisors on Climate Change for a two-year term. Each member of this cohort brings their region of the world to the conversation with hopes of building a global climate justice proposition. It’s an ambitious thought, so of course my first question for Joice was: how do we build this climate proposition, and where do young people fit in that?
For her, the issues are structural. So solutions need to be as well. First, she sees incorporating migrant and youth voices as essential to long-lasting climate rehabilitation. “We need to see migrants as fundamental actors, youth as catalysts, and water as an element of cooperation instead of conflict. We start this with hydro-diplomacy” she told me.
“Young people were in the direct line of impact, so by planting roots right where the crisis was, Mendez and her co-founders created a long-lasting, self-sustaining web of activists in the area.”
Joice was born in Colombia but grew up on the border between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. ‘The land of waters’ she called it. Water was everywhere. In college, she studied energy production because South America houses some of the world’s largest hydroelectric plants. Water as a tool for cooperation is not a new idea in the region, but the actuality differs. Along the lines of these plants, community displacement thrives. So she would study the way both were tied to each other.
In one of her first projects, she co-founded the Youth Collective of the Paraná Basin #3, a binational platform between Paraguay and Brazil that gathered youth from 25 cities within the Paraná Basin. These were cities most impacted by a conflict centered around the Itaipu Dam.
For context, the Itaipu Dam is one of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world, but its construction caused large-scale displacement, and since then multiple disputes have formed over its use. She founded the youth collective in response. The goal was to attract local leadership and then nurture it.
“Often in climate conversations, local voices are overshadowed,'' she explains. Through education efforts and by providing resources to local activists, Joice created a network of local leaders who would go on to collaborate in the development of strong, effective solutions in and around their communities. Investing in on-site leadership is key to building solutions that can sustain themselves long after they are created. These young people were in the direct line of impact and so by planting roots right where the crisis was, Mendez and her co-founders created a long-lasting, self-sustaining web of activists in the area.
“Young people are not a monolith. There’s a lot of diversity of thought amongst youth— especially regarding environmental justice.”
Through similar methods, with the goal of addressing a lack of local environmental engagement, Mendez co-founded the Moema Viezzer Environmental Educative Observatory. “We decided to tackle these environmental challenges with a team of students and professors from the Federal University for Latin American Integration in Brazil. As a team, we worked to create solutions that would strengthen citizen engagement.” Mendez explained.
People only know what they know because someone taught them. Engagement in any form, especially civil engagement, comes best through learning. This focus on accessible information and political literacy brought me to her work in the first place. Those who are directly impacted by crises are best fitted to solve them. If we can give people impacted by structural issues the right information, we can equip them to take on those obstacles successfully.
The barrier Joice saw was that these communities face a lack of access to fiscal, professional, and academic resources. And that realization kick-started her projects and brought her to the United Nations. Last year she was at COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates, and her ideas met the world stage.
There are a few key players in the sphere of climate solutions development, but Joice is set on the one she thinks shows the most promise: us. The hope is that in her time as part of the UN envoy, she can bring us as a demographic to every seat.
Of course, young people are not a monolith. There’s a lot of diversity of thought amongst youth— especially regarding environmental justice, and we touched on that as well. Joyce's multifaceted identity as a young climate advocate and migrant, adds a crucial dimension to her perspective on resources and how climate security is linked to peace. Intersectionality is where we ended our conversation.
“It’s necessary for us to encourage dialogue across different cultures, ages, economic backgrounds and ideologies so that we can find a convergence point between the main objectives and challenges we are presented with.”
From Joice’s experiences, climate betterment lies in intentional conversation. “It’s necessary for us to encourage dialogue across different cultures, ages, economic backgrounds and ideologies so that we can find a convergence point between the main objectives and challenges we are presented with.” At the time of our conversation, Joice was preparing for COP 28, and so the idea of collaborative conversation and collective solutions was especially relevant to her.
The current condition of our planet does not leave room for optimism and leaves many young people feeling stagnant. Where do we go from here? Joice is a reminder of the importance of collective movement. For her, that was through these environmental literacy programs and centering local youth.
These were efforts that took her all the way to the UN. She’s not alone in her place as an impactful figure in South American environmental activism, and my hope is her work stands as an example of the capacity for change that exists in the region and among our generation.
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