“You Need a Month’s Holiday Just to Get over It!” Exploring Young People’s Lived Experiences of the UN Climate Change Negotiations

Harriet Thew, Lucie Middlemiss and Jouni Paavola
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Harriet Thew: Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
Lucie Middlemiss: Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
Jouni Paavola: Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-21

Abstract: Despite youth organisations having participated as a recognised constituency (YOUNGO) in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for over a decade, few studies have explored their lived experiences of participation. Drawing upon deep ethnographic engagement with a member organisation of YOUNGO conducted between 2015 and 2018, this paper applies the “7P” model from the Youth Studies literature to explore youth participation in the UNFCCC from seven intersecting lenses: Purpose , Positioning , Perspectives , Power Relations , Protection , Place , and Process . This yields many insights into how youth participants negotiate sustainability in this context, including the Purposes or drivers motivating their participation, the ways in which youth are Positioned within the UNFCCC, the asymmetrical Power Relations they have to navigate, as well as the logistical challenges relating to their Protection, including their physical safety and psychological wellbeing. Based on rich empirical findings, we amend the 7P model of youth participation, replacing Process , which we argue is more of a methodological than an analytical concern, with Psychological Factors , which we propose is a key factor in shaping youth participation in negotiations of sustainability.

Keywords: youth participation; climate change negotiations; global environmental governance; political participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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