‘My responsibility to be hopeful’: The Climate Generation at COP28

Fresh off 21 hours of travel and two flights from her home in Barbados to “the farthest I have ever been,” Naomi Cambridge tackles the first day of her first-ever Conference of Parties, or COP, powered by “adrenaline and hope.”

Like many young activists balancing their climate work and university studies, she spent hours on the way to Dubai cramming for end-of-semester university exams waiting for her next week. At the climate conference Tuesday, she smiles and waves down colleagues she had previously only met via Zoom, as they push for commitments to phase out fossil fuels and financing for developing countries.

“We are not all starting from an equal playing field or the same starting line,” Ms. Cambridge said of developing nations’ struggle to access or afford renewable energy technologies – a major concern. “It is our generation’s role to push for climate justice.”

Two dynamics hit her within her first hour here: inclusivity and the “influx” of oil and gas firm lobbyists and PR firm handlers. “Being at COP at an oil- and gas-producing country is a bit of a paradox, but it is not necessarily a negative thing,” she says. If the United Arab Emirates and other oil producers “are sincere,” it can “bring climate activists into the same room.”

This is the kind of credible hope that defines the Climate Generation, as the Monitor chronicled in a global project about the cohort born since 1989, when consciousness of children’s rights and global warming began to intersect. Here at COP28, we met up with three of these young change-makers to hear how the conference is playing out from their perspectives.

Public cynicism and skepticism abounded even before this COP opened in Dubai, with the world set to miss its 1.5-degree-Celsius target. Climate apathy is prevalent among young people, which is why Ms. Cambridge has set out to counter it at COP. “Hope is the fundamental thing that spurs action. We need action; therefore we need to be powered by hope,” she says.

And if, as it seemed on Friday, rich developing nations and oil producers are digging in their heels and refusing to grant concessions to developing nations?

“All the more reason for youth to be here. Our main role here is to hold the officials at COP28 accountable,” she says.         

He’s nonstop

Namibian Deon Shekuza darts from negotiation rooms to panels to pavilions with a bounce in his step, somehow locked onto both his phone and everyone around him, stopping every minute to wave or clasp hands with an acquaintance.

Since he’s an eight-time veteran at COP, you might think he runs the place.

As a climate negotiator for Namibia focusing on the issue of a just and inclusive transition, he is splitting his time advocating for adaptation funding for Africa, negotiating at odd hours day and night, presenting young Namibians’ views at panels, and guiding first-time African youth COP-goers under his wing.  

It is exhausting. But his energy and voice do not falter. Neither does his smile.  

“This is the only forum where all our voices, all nations, on paper are equal,” he says in between shaking hands with a delegate. “Namibia has a voice in the process, young people have a voice in the process, and we must take advantage of this opportunity and keep talking and acting to push for change every way we can.”

There have been setbacks. He describes the big money pledges and announcements by the COP28 organizer, the UAE, as “a distraction,” sizzle without substance. He worries too about his country’s over focus on green hydrogen as its climate response, and the conference’s complete absence of attention on adaptation financing for developing countries.

Then there is the exclusivity: closed-door meetings, delegates and negotiators being cordoned off into hallways for hours as princes and world leaders arrive. Lobbyists are everywhere.

On Tuesday, the COP28 presidency booted Mr. Shekuza and other negotiators from the room they were convening in to make way for a high-level private-sector “event.” “I accidentally wandered into one VIP lounge, and I never saw so many world leaders and CEOs in my life,” he says. “They should be in the negotiating rooms, not closed rooms.”

But he still retains hope in the process, no matter this year’s outcomes.

“There is a global focus on climate right now. It is up to us to steer the negotiations and debate into the right direction,” he says.

Soaked school books

Farzana Faruk Jhumu has spent COP crisscrossing the 2-square-mile expo center, racing from the United Nations women’s pavilion, to informal negotiation talks, down to the Bangladesh pavilion, and to the UNICEF pavilions where she distributes brochures and speaks to visitors.

For the UNICEF youth ambassador and Bangladesh representative, conference days run from 9 a.m. panels to 11 p.m. reviews of negotiation texts before doing it all over again.

But the amount of oil and gas lobbyists – 2,347, a number she has memorized – and lack of progress in talks on fossil fuels, saving the 1.5-degree warming goal, and financing have been discouraging.

“They don’t even want to talk about a fossil fuel phaseout or the 1.5-degree mitigation goal,” she says. “We, the civil society, are fighting to put it in.”

She had initial high hopes for the “loss and damage” fund, a reparations fund for countries hit by climate disasters and a hard-fought gain by the developing world at last year’s COP. It was activated on the first day of this year’s conference.

But the financial commitments, some $600 million, remain well short of the $100 billion required. “When we need billions, we are getting millions,” Ms. Jhumu says. “If you put a charity box outside of COP, you could collect the same amount. It is sad and insulting.

“Every day in the morning I say, do I have to go here? Then I think of the women and children in my country who are building solutions for themselves.”

The image that keeps her going: Bangladeshi children drying textbooks in the sun after a flood, determined to continue learning to earn a better future.

“They don’t lose hope when they lose so much,” she says. “It is my responsibility to be hopeful and to be there for these people. They give me the energy to move forward.”