In October 2025, I travelled to Berlin to attend the Climate and Security Conference as a young peacebuilder and intern, engaging in discussions on how climate change reshapes conflict dynamics, displacement, and fragility. A few weeks later, I was on a plane flying over the Amazon rainforest, pressing my face to the window to capture photos of its winding rivers as I made my way to Belém, in my home country, Brazil, for the UN Climate Change Conference. Landing there felt deeply personal. To access climate security challenges was my focus, but I was surprised by what I encountered. The corridors of COP30 were filled with young participants. Young people like me rushed between side events, filled negotiation rooms, and carried the conference on their backs, as activists, volunteers, assistants, and even negotiators. There was urgency in their steps, purpose in their voices.
Seeing this energy up close made me pause. If young people were everywhere (speaking, organizing, negotiating), were we truly shaping the agenda? Being in those spaces led me to reflect on something deeper: who gets to shape these conversations? While global leaders debated climate risks and security implications, I found myself increasingly attentive to the role of young people in these processes, not only as those most affected, but as actors with agency, expertise, and solutions. Attending these conferences prompted me to consider how inclusive decision-making processes can strengthen climate and peace efforts alike, and what remains to be done to ensure these agendas are genuinely representative of the generations whose futures are at stake.
In December 2025, the UN Security Council reaffirmed, through the adoption of resolution 2807, the positive role of young people in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, sustaining peace and recovery. It also decided to continue considering the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda within its work, including through youth briefers in Council engagements. Even in a time of deep polarization, this sends a powerful signal that Member States remain committed to the Youth, Peace and Security agenda. However, after my journey from Berlin to Belem, I understood that in a world defined by climate breakdown, the Youth, Peace and Security agenda cannot remain disconnected from the climate crisis.
Today, nearly half of the world’s young people aged 18–29 live in countries experiencing high or extreme levels of violent conflict. At the same time, roughly 75 per cent of the global youth population live in lower-income and climate-vulnerable countries. More than 698 million young people reside in fragile and conflict-affected settings, where the impacts of climate change are often most severe. Therefore, climate change and conflict do not operate in isolation. Together, they drive food insecurity, unemployment and displacement, while disrupting access to education and essential services. In 2024 alone, extreme weather events interrupted schooling for 242 million children worldwide. Climate vulnerability is also profoundly generational: under a 1.5°C scenario, children are projected to face up to four times greater exposure to climate extremes than previous generations. For today’s young people, peace, security and climate collapse are not separate policy domains. They are lived realities unfolding simultaneously, in the same places, shaping the same futures.
Climate change is no longer a future risk. It is a daily reality reshaping livelihoods, security, displacement, and conflict dynamics, especially for young people. Youth are not merely on the frontlines of risk. They are on the frontlines of leadership. Across regions and realities, young people are driving green enterprise initiatives, advancing natural resource governance, and leading ecosystem restoration efforts that deliver tangible peacebuilding gains. They are creating intergenerational dialogue, forging shared land management systems, and building cooperative livelihood models that reinforce both climate resilience and social cohesion. And yet, even as the world increasingly speaks of climate as a matter of security, young people continue to stand at the margins of both peace processes and climate decision-making, with a long path still ahead.
It was precisely this tension (between marginalisation and leadership) that became visible to me in Berlin and Belém. What stood out most was the depth of youth’s technical and political fluency on intergenerational justice. We are ready! We are alert! Young delegates consistently referenced legal instruments, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child General Comment No. 26, which formally recognises the climate crisis as a violation of children’s rights. Many drew inspiration from the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, whose relentless advocacy helped secure the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, affirming that the 1.5°C limit is not a political aspiration, but a legal obligation. This case stands as a powerful and inspiring example of how young people can influence global climate governance. It reshaped how we, as youth, speak about power, law and responsibility in international arenas. While the Advisory Opinion does not explicitly address peace, it prompted me to reflect on how legal clarity and climate accountability can contribute to preventing future instability, particularly in fragile and climate-vulnerable contexts.
Young people I spoke to highlighted challenges that they face in engaging in decision-making processes on mitigating climate change. When young people talked about ‘meaningful participation’, it always came back to one thing: access. Youth were clear: participation is inseparable from resources. Funding determines who can travel, who can prepare and who can stay engaged beyond symbolic moments. Without financial support for accommodation, visas, interpretation and sustained engagement, participation becomes exclusive, reinforcing existing inequalities. Funding is not logistical assistance; it is a structural condition that determines whose voices shape global agendas and whose remain unheard.
Young people also highlighted language as another invisible barrier. High-level climate and peace spaces overwhelmingly operate in English, privileging a narrow segment of youth. Many young people possess deep local knowledge, community legitimacy and technical expertise, yet are sidelined due to language and access constraints. This creates a two-tier system of participation and strips global discussions of diversity, nuance and lived experience.
Over time, this disconnect breeds burnout. And burnout is real. Most youth engagement remains voluntary, unpaid and precarious. Young people arrive at global climate conferences already juggling work, studies, activism and caregiving. Without institutionalised roles, paid positions and long-term pathways, participation becomes unsustainable. Inclusion cannot rely on sacrifice alone. These gaps matter because the stakes are enormous at the intersection of climate, youth, peace and security. Addressing them requires more than rhetorical commitments. More inclusive climate discussions demand predictable, accessible and flexible funding for youth participation and youth-led initiatives, funding that enables sustained engagement rather than one-off moments of visibility. Resources must cover travel, accommodation, interpretation and long-term programmatic support. Multilingual spaces and interpretation services are essential to ensure that participation does not privilege only English-speaking elites. Institutionalised roles within climate and peace architectures, alongside partnerships with the different sectors, including the private one, to invest in youth-led initiatives, can transform volunteerism into viable leadership pathways.
I was a young peacebuilder in the midst of climate conferences, and I discovered that while the challenges are significant, the possibilities are transformative. When young people are meaningfully included, climate action becomes more locally grounded, more innovative and more prevention-oriented. Inclusive processes strengthen climate resilience by drawing on community knowledge, entrepreneurial energy and intergenerational accountability. In turn, climate-responsive policies that address inequality, resource governance and livelihood security contribute directly to sustaining peace. Strengthening youth engagement, therefore, is not symbolic, it is strategic. It is about recognising that climate resilience and peacebuilding are mutually reinforcing, and that young people are indispensable to both.
About Daisy Bispo Teles
Daisy is a Brazilian young peacebuilder and member of the Rotary Peace Fellow Network and master’s student in Peace and Conflict Studies at Uppsala University. Her work focuses on the intersection of environmental, community protection, and peacebuilding, with experience collaborating with organisations such as Instituto Igarapé, Cáritas and the UN-DPPA.
Daisy is also a former intern with the Foundation’s Sustaining Peace Programme, where she explored the connections between youth, climate, peace, and security, as well as the role of the private sector in supporting youth-led peacebuilding initiatives.