The Agents of Change, a flagship program under the Indian Youth Climate Network aims at engaging youth at the national and international level on the diplomacy around Climate Change and the UNFCCC process. This year, over 20 delegates from 13 cities of the country were selected through a nationwide application process and taken to the Conference of Parties 15 on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference of parties or COP is an annual gathering of world leaders and statesmen negotiating the terms and conditions for a global climate deal and what needs to be done for to prevent runaway climate change.
The delegation had students and young professionals, studying and working on issues of science, social development, entrepreneurship and others. The delegation was divided into smaller teams that got to work on understanding the policy issues around the COP, campaigning, political strategy, media and communications. This team was also supported by a grounds team back in India that helped in formulating a policy paper for the COP that envisions the demands of the youth from world leaders to tackle this problem and also a couple of submissions to the UNFCCC secretariat as recommendation papers to certain existing policies.
The delegation that participated in the conference was engaged in talking to the negotiators from India and other countries to better understand the current state of negotiations and ways to disseminate this information back to India. With the youth delegation in Copenhagen, rapid response to the daily outcomes of the conference was possible as information was broadcasted real time and campaigns and direct actions were conducted across the world as a response to the negotiations. With the sole aim of bringing the negotiations to millions of Indians back home, media was engaged at the COP in a big way. Both Indian and international media houses were approached and the Indian Youth delegation was covered across various print and electronic media.
The delegates engaged actively with youth delegations from other countries and took part in the conference of youth that took place a couple of days before the COP. Building networks, working on collaborative campaigns and ultimately bringing the voice and vision of the global youth to the fore was an unparalleled experience for the delegation. As part of various working groups working round the clock, the Indian delegation made its presence felt amongst fellow civil society members, businesses and the Government.
Though the outcome of the conference was a disappointment, the presence of youth was a source of great inspiration for various people. The Indian Youth delegation feels the need for far greater action from world leaders and has taken the mantle of working hard on domestic policy that will eventually influence the outcome of international negotiations. “We are not done yet”, is the phrase that the youth have echoed after COP15 and have already begun building for a larger and a greater movement towards COP16 in Mexico.