Brazilian and Nordic youth delegates kickstart COP30 prep at Roskilde Festival

Last week, 130,000 people with an average age of 24 attended Northern Europe’s biggest music festival. Like the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Roskilde Festival focuses on a sustainable future, a green climate, and the importance of involving young people in achieving these goals. As part of the festival programme this year, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Festival provided the setting for talks involving Marcele Oliveira, Presidency Youth Climate Champion (PYCC) for COP30, Sigurd Seindal Krabbe and Mette Lundgaard, Denmark’s youth delegates to the UN for Environment and Climate, Kathrine Strange from the Danish Youth Climate Council and other young people from the Nordic Region and elsewhere.

The event underlined the Council of Ministers’ commitment to a stronger voice and greater influence for young people in international climate policy and builds on its vision of a greener, more sustainable and inclusive Region – which it feeds into global agendas via partnerships with actors in the Global South.

Over the course of the week, the UN youth delegates attended a series of workshops, events, and meetings with a wide range of young people, including Climate Live, the Green Youth Movement, Extinction Rebellion Norway and the Nordic Coalition. The aim was to come up with recommendations to take to COP30. It is expected they will be presented in the Nordic Pavilion and form part of the actual UN negotiations. The official youth delegates will have access to the negotiating room, providing a rare and important opportunity for young people’s voices and proposals to be heard by decision-makers.

The Brazilian-Nordic recommendations are now at the draft stage and will be refined at a series of follow-up meetings with the youth organisations and experts involved before they are presented to global decision-makers at COP30 later in the year. The recommendations build on the acknowledgement that young people need to be involved in climate work, that climate change affects both the global south and north, and that implementing the right solutions is a matter of urgency. 

Since 2015, the Nordic Pavilion has served as a joint Nordic forum at COP, one where young people have the opportunity to set agendas and meet decision-makers. Some of the most pressing issues are discussed in the Pavilion – from systemic change, climate justice and preserving biodiversity to involving children and young people in decision-making processes and the role and influence of youth climate councils. At COP30, the Nordic Pavilion will again give young people from the Nordics and the rest of the world a platform on which to set their own agenda and discuss regional and global climate challenges.