Members of the Canadian Youth Delegation attended a UNFCCC side-event today entitled ‘Growing together in a changing climate’. The meeting was youth focused, and involved a series of panellists representing a diverse set of organisations including the United Nations Youth Program, UNICEF, British Council, 350.org, various members of the International Youth Delegation, and several official national level negotiators.

Participants were asked to answer two questions:

1) How are your groups’ actions supporting solutions to climate change?

2) What are the most important compromises that must be made in order to achieve a meaningful agreement at Poznan?

The highlight of the event was when Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC arrived to participate in the dialogue. The man is like the Bono of climate change politics. He captures the attention of every room he entrers at the COP.

Naturally the question and answer period was directed mostly towards the chief UN climate diplomat. Mr. de Boer offered a number of candid responses to queries from the audience. In response to questions about how youth can amplify their voice and influence at the conference he offered a blunt assessment. Mr. de Boer said that in some respects it was too late (for youth to influence the proceedings of the conference). He suggested that youth should work at home to influence domestic policy in support of climate action. When pressed, Yvo suggested that youth attempt to contact all 192 country delegations at Poznan in order to maximize their lobby efforts.

Many youth attending the meeting voiced concern about the lack of youth representation on official government delegations. Mr. de Boer noted that this would not continue to be a problem if nations simply lived up to their Rio promise from 1992 when countries committed to include youth in their delegations to such meetings. Clearly much work remains to be done in the youth movement to increase our representation at climate talks, but that should not distract from efforts to promote climate action in the public sphere. Advocating for domestic climate action on a consistent basis (between conferences and throughout the year) as well as promoting policy implementation at local and international levels will need to remain a central focus of the international youth movement as we move towards Copenhagen and the post-Kyoto framework beyond 2012.