Our students were successful at the 2024 SUAD Youth COP Mock Negotiations

They were not only selected among hundreds of candidates from the five continents to participate in the mock negotiations but also had an outstanding performance during the two days of negotiation activities. 

Sophia Waseem Khan won the best speaker award at the SUAD Youth COP Competition 2024.

Carmen Yu Hui Tan and Oliver Pugh won the negotiation skills award.

Many congratulations on these outstanding results!

From the moment we were announced as Japan’s representatives for the negotiations, my teammate, Vaibhav Pramode Nair, and I met almost daily throughout the month leading up to the event. We dedicated this time to building our understanding of Japan's climate and sustainability policies, as well as drafting our position paper and creating our negotiation strategy.

The almost 3 days of negotiations was a completely immersive experience. During the Youth COP, our team focused on building coalitions, ensuring all voices were represented, and finding synergies and alliances to foster peace and consensus. The high calibre of passionate delegates at the negotiations inspired an atmosphere of intense debate full of constant, rapid communication. It was also such a privilege to be chosen by the participating delegates as the Most Congenial Delegate, The Firefighter/Peacemaker Delegate and the most likely to be the next UNFCCC Secretariat.

From this experience, I gained invaluable skills, including the ability to quickly analyze complex documents—a process made much easier after a month of reading UN and government reports. I also improved my ability to deliver speeches on the spot, rapidly adjust one's strategy, and bring conflicting ideas together through facilitating discussion between delegations. The community of your climate leaders formed from this event is a powerful one and I cannot wait to hear and support all the incredible ways in which my fellow delegates are going to create change around the world.

I now have the honour of being awarded a trip to Baku for COP29 Azerbaijan, where I with Séverine Ginot, Samuel Fonseca de Carvalho and Anshita Arora will present an official panel: Youth Voices for a Sustainable Future: Oceans, Biodiversity, and Energy at COP29 where we will present the declarations from the Youth COP and participate in COY19. I am so excited!

I would like to say thank you to Petra Minnerop and the Durham Centre for Sustainable Development Law and Policy (CSDLP) for first introducing me to the competition. My involvement with the CSDLP for the last year definitely had a part to play in my success!

As a physicist with a grappled interest in global energy futures, participating in Youth COP 2024 was particularly insightful. Witnessing the interdisciplinary collaboration between nations from both the Global North and South was eye-opening. It reinforced the need for holistic solutions that address the energy crisis and biodiversity concerns while ensuring justice and equity. The dynamic exchange of ideas demonstrated that tackling climate challenges requires more than technical expertise; it demands global cooperation and an understanding of diverse socioeconomic realities. This experience deepened my belief that only through inclusive and equitable approaches can we achieve sustainable progress on these urgent global issues. Fundamentally, the rich debate underscored above all else that global problems require global solutions.

Many congratulations and we are excited to meet with you at COP29 in Baku!