How are young people engaging with COP 17 (the 17th Conference of the Parties) Conference, as world leaders and environment ministers meet to discuss Climate Change and the future of our planet?

In many ways: young people an important role to play because we have the most at stake in these negotiations, it is our future which is being decided, and we who will inherit the decisions made or the terribly implications of the decisions not made at these conferences.

There is also a wide variety of young people here and we all have different ideas about how to be most effective in the process itself.

Firstly, there is YOUNGO, the official group for youth which has the ability to make interventions (deliver speeches) in the plenary sessions. This youth group meets every morning in a spokes council to share information, decide how to effectively engage and plot strategy for the day to come.

Some government delegations have young people participating in the delegations themselves. These young people wear pink badges in the conference center and are involved in tracking the negotiations, help to shape national policy, and represent the voice of youth in the delegations.

Next up there are nationally organized youth delegations such as the SustainUS, the Indian Youth Climate Coalition, the United Kingdom Youth Climate Coalition and the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, These groups work to raise the profile of their countries policy stances, amplify the voices of communities which are not being heard in the negotiations and harness the power of traditional and social media to communicate the events at the conference to the world.

As a young person witnessing the process and the sometimes painful inaction on the part of those who hold power in the negotiations, each day is an incredibly fast paced and very very long roller-coaster. Each hour can bring new highs and lows and sometimes it is difficult to say exactly how effective our actions are at moving the negotiations themselves.

When I meet with other youth from around the world and learn about how climate change is effecting front line communitiies along with what they are doing to confront this immense challenge, I can’t help but be motivated to rise to the occasion, push through the exhaustion and fight with all I’ve got for a better, sustainable future.