Paths to Meaningful Youth Involvement at the International Climate Change Negotiations: Lessons from COP22 in Marrakesh

Sammanfattning: In the last decade, anthropogenic climate change has caused strong impacts on natural and human systems worldwide. It is of particular importance to include youths in the international decision-making process centred on climate change as they represent the closest living relatives to future generations. Therefore they need to have a say in the decisions affecting their future. Different schools of thought defined characteristics for ideal communication in these political decision-making arenas. The most contradicting theories are on one hand deliberative democrats who favour dialogic and consensus-based proceedings and on the other hand proponents of agonistic pluralism who prefer the conflictual elements of force and disruption in communication processes. The aim of this study is to explore synergies and intersections between both in theory contradicting paths. The study follows a case study design of the international climate change negotiations COP22 in Marrakech 2016. The data collection process involved empirical observations and semi-structured interviews with 30 international youth participants as to their experiences of participating in proceedings, petitioning politicians, and protesting outside venues. The results of this study show that young people concurrently navigate between formal deliberative proceedings and informal agonistic approaches, taking advantage of their underacknowledged positive cumulative and complementing effects. The interplay between both paths stimulates meaningful involvement for youths at the conference and within the climate change social movement. Youths navigating simultaneously between both paths are shown to have both insider knowledge about the vulnerabilities of the system and outsider knowledge providing enough distance to criticise the proceedings. Thus, these youths have the best merits to meaningfully involve in the decision making and successfully introduce change. The process of enculturation to the norms and procedural rules of the conference contributes to the level of meaningful youth involvement and determines the participation path chosen. Moreover, the results outline that the influence of each path in the decision-making process and the definition of meaningful involvement varies with the arena in which it is executed. Whereas meaningful involvement for deliberative inclined youths can be best described through a shared power youth-adult participation, youths following the agonistic path seek meaningful involvement through emotion work and empowerment expressed in direct actions and protest.