COP 26 fell short of delivering for the generation that will have to face some of the toughest effects of climate change, according to children’s organizations.
Advocates highlighted concerns around participation at the event and worried about the prospect of undetailed negotiation commitments to protect children’s rights in a warming world.
“The mitigation elements [being agreed at COP 26] don’t add up to a world that’s safe for them. It’s not a world where children can thrive and survive, it’s a world of war and pestilence,” said Kit Vaughan, senior climate adviser at Save the Children UK.
Joanna Rea, director of advocacy at UNICEF UK, said her organization for the entire summit was “repeatedly told by young people who attended COP26 that they were not getting into the rooms they needed to be in due to event access restrictions and accessibility.”
At COP 26, civil society groups fear exclusion from negotiations
Experts from NGOs have long watched proceedings at the U.N. Conference of the Parties. But having already been largely excluded from talks in the opening days of COP 26, there are fears civil society's observer status is no longer guaranteed.
Rea added: “Entrance to the conference venue did not necessarily constitute meaningful participation. What was needed and deserved by children and young people was a seat at the table to inform the decisions being made that directly affect their lives and futures. Sadly, the young people we work with say COP26 fell short of this.”
Complaints about representation at the summit have been continuous over the past fortnight, with civil society observers repeatedly saying they have been unable to monitor negotiations effectively. The organizers, the United Kingdom and United Nations, have said running a summit during a pandemic presented significant logistical challenges, which led to unforeseen difficulties.
UNICEF accredited 70 youngsters as part of the U.N. delegation to the Glasgow summit, and Rea told Devex “what we also wanted to see was governments and leaders meaningfully and formally include young people and ensure the outcomes of the conference responded to their concerns.”
But only 30 countries signed the intergovernmental Declaration on Children, Youth and Climate Action during the summit, according to UNICEF. The COP 26 host was not among them.
“The mitigation elements [being agreed at COP 26] don’t add up to a world that’s safe for them. It’s not a world where children can thrive and survive, it’s a world of war and pestilence.”
— Kit Vaughan, senior climate adviser, Save the Children UK“We want to see the UK Government, and other nations that have not yet done so, to formally recognise the climate crisis as a child rights crisis by signing the ... Declaration and embedding a child rights approach at the heart of their strategies to tackle climate change,” said Rea.
Vaughan said there was “lots of grandstanding and voices, but there’s no financial mechanisms, there’s no specific policies, there’s no promises of specific money, there’s no direct targeting of support for them” within the texts being negotiated.
Advocates say children needed to be included in COP 26 because, as Rea said, the “climate crisis is a child rights crisis.”
“Children have done the least to cause climate change and yet it is threatening their right to education and health, their right to live in a clean and safe environment and their right to survive and thrive, as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Rea added.
“Kids will inherit the future, this is about them, the future of humanity,” said Vaughan.