Journal
SUSTAINABILITY
Volume 14, Issue 7, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/su14074259
Keywords
youth participation; climate change negotiations; global environmental governance; political participation
Funding
- Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [ES/W005522/1]
- ESRC [ES/W005522/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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This study examines youth participation in the UNFCCC by applying the 7P model and conducting ethnographic research. The findings shed light on how young participants negotiate sustainability in this context, including their motivations, positioning, power relations, and challenges related to protection.
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.
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