This November, a group of six young leaders passionate about working for climate change solutions traveled from six different countries on three continents to Bonn, Germany for COP23, the United Nations Climate Change Conference. During our two weeks at the conference, we observed negotiations and plenaries, attended side events and talks, and even hosted an event of our own — a first for the YEL delegation to a COP! Now COP23 has ended, and the world is already looking towards COP24. The delegates are using this time to reflect on their experience in Bonn and answer two questions: what will they take away from this conference, and what are their next steps?

Casey Miller

As I look back on my two weeks at COP23, I feel two things — disappointment and hope. During the conference, the idea that nothing was moving fast enough was prevalent. There was a frustrating distance between side events with experts discussing the urgent need to ramp up ambition and the slow-moving negotiations. As our delegation spent every morning going over the previous day’s negotiations, the idea that some developed country was dragging its feet, slowing down progress in areas such as pre-2020 action and loss and damage happened so often that discussing it felt somewhat redundant. Looking at the results of this year’s conference, I wonder what else could have been achieved if all countries took scientists’ warnings to heart and negotiated towards stronger climate action like our lives depend on it — because they do.

Luckily, I didn’t leave the conference filled only with thoughts of disappointment and hopelessness. The people I’ve met during the conference, both in this delegation and as part of other organizations, have left me with one very hopeful thought — with so many passionate, intelligent and innovative people working towards solving some of the world’s greatest problems, I’m sure there’s still hope to reach the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. Even if you look solely within the YEL delegation to COP23, you’ll find many different types of people — entrepreneurs, activists, academics, development experts, and inventors — all working towards one common goal while utilizing their personal and unique expertise.

Now that I’m back home in Vienna, I’m taking some time to find ways to keep the passion and drive I feel with at the COP alive all year long. I’ve been inspired by the rest of my delegation to find out what the most pressing climate change issues we’re facing are and then work on innovative ways to fix them. Most importantly, I’m actively looking into events where young professionals get together to discuss inventive ways to solve these issues. Fellow delegate Shrina and I spent a lot of time during COP23 discussing what positive results could come out of groups of young professionals coming together to work towards a common goal. I’m looking forward to put those ideas into action.

Sian Evans

This was my first COP, and given my background in environmental management and current work on sustainable development, it was a real privilege for me to attend an event I’ve heard so much about. The volume of people and sheer energy at the event struck me – it really felt like a place where things were happening, and progress could be made. The presence of the US Climate Action Center, representing the many American leaders committed to upholding the Paris Agreement, demonstrated that while Trump may be u-turning on climate action, the rest of the world is moving ahead – with or without him. Although there is still so much to be done, with developing countries dragging their feet, and many key issues being kicked down the road to COP24, I still left Bonn feeling hopeful.

YEL delegates at COP23

When I returned to Jerusalem and got back to work and my daily life, COP23 suddenly felt very distant. Many of my friends and colleagues didn’t know what COP 23 was, let alone the issues being discussed there. Climate change is such a difficult issue to communicate, and it’s hard to engage people (including decision makers) with something that feels so distant, particularly in regions fraught with their own challenges. The UNFCCC process – with its acronyms, articles and terminology – does not make this any easier! One of my key takeaways is that more needs to be done to ensure that the energy I experienced at COP 23 translates to action on the ground, by engaging the communities, businesses and decision makers that aren’t at these events or a part of this process. I think that youth have a big role to play here, so I’m looking forward to continue to work on these issues and hopefully be in Poland in December 2018 for COP 24!

Katja Garson
COP23 was full-on, contradictory, baffling, inspiring. My six days inside the Bonn and Bula Zones were characterized by a consistent inconsistency: a buzz of activity; of interviews and listening; of moving from meeting to press conference to civil society action. This was the ‘technical COP’ of working out the details relating to the implementation of the Paris Agreement, as well as the Fijian COP of openness and welcome. I bring away some thoughts on access and voices. Most people do not have the privilege of entering the COP space, many groups are underrepresented once there, and many were denied visas to attend. I took part in ‘Pass the Mic’, an action which provided a space for indigenous peoples to speak out. This should not have been necessary — all voices must have the same space and stage, always. COP is not only an international conference. It is an event which demonstrates the many inequalities and injustices of everyday life on Earth. It is a model, small-scale, of tensions, divisions, and, thankfully, of collaborations and celebrations.

Going forward, I will draw on the great energy which I gained from being surrounded by people working for environmental justice and sustainability around the world, especially the younger generation who will continue to be impacted by climate change. Although the policy outcomes of COP23 were less than impressive, with many of the details of the Paris rulebook still undecided, it is the raw determination and creativity of NGO and grassroots campaigners, researchers and activists which inspires me. The walkout from a White House press conference on ‘cleaner’ fossil fuels was a key moment of action which stated that ‘we, the people, reject your false claims.’ As the UK government prepares to leave the EU, I will work alongside friends at the UK Youth Climate Coalition to make people aware of the environmental implications of the government’s decisions. We will call for appropriate and binding legislation, and will support allies across borders. And I will continue to value connection, organizing and communication as tools for resistance and rebuilding.

Shrina Kurani
Take aways:
This year, COP23 took me on a ride. While updating my climate science, I simultaneously recognized the climate elite for the first time, which fed my continued frustration with the process, and led to me to my final takeaway: that I need to be brave. Last year I still held the perspective of a naive student and budding entrepreneur, in awe of meeting my climate heroes in the flesh. It took a year, and evolving into the critically optimistic perspective of an investor, to identify the inefficiencies and have my wonder fade into frustration. And I realized that the best thing I could do was to play to my strengths and be opportunistic. Landing YEL a press conference just took sending an email – and now thousands of people have heard our message. I’m so excited about that!

Next steps:
So now that COP is over and the excitement is approaching a normal state, I need to take my own advice. I need to have the courage to stand up for what I believe in, and then be open to convinced otherwise. Just as we need to emphasize adaptive climate policy, we also need to be adaptive in looking for best practices and working together as a community to move forward as a united front. There is strength in diverse perspectives, and strength in community – and that’s what I’m looking forward to continue building. My climate community!

Alexander Pfeiffer

My main take-away is that hope is not lost yet. Attending COP 22 in Marrakech last year and witnessing the Trump election was a pretty discouraging experience and following his climate policies since then did not improve my mood and attitude. Being at COP 23, however, proved that there are still many Americans and, perhaps more importantly, American leaders out there that will uphold the U.S.’ contribution to the Paris Agreement. Trump clearly does not speak for the majority of mankind — in fact, not even the majority of U.S. citizens — and will therefore fail to block climate progress. This COP has clearly showed this!

Going forward I think much more needs to be done. While the parties are fleshing out the rule book to figure out how the Paris Agreement can be implemented global emissions have risen again by 2-3% in 2017 and are expected to continue to rise. At the same time coral reefs die, wildfires destroy California, Africa still suffers from a multi-year drought and extreme weather events wreck havoc in many parts of the world. Overall our planet sends us clear signals that we are running out of time. I think over the next 2 years it will be important to push for a lot of pre-2020 action and especially avoid further lock-in by building even more dirty infrastructure.

As a German I will do my best to push for a clear statement of the German government by which year they will have exited the dirty coal-fired power generation (#exitCoal). I believe such a statement must be communicated before the next COP in Poland in 2018 if Germany wants to continue to be a leader in the climate effort. Being the organisational host of this COP it was cringeworthy to witness the disgraceful failure of Germany, represented by Steinmeier and Merkel, to showcase good climate leadership.

Lastly it was great to meet so many old friends again. I didn’t realise it but after now three COPs I already know many people in this realm and it was great to see many of them again (including three quarter of my delegation). I hope to be able to stay part of this delegation and effort.

How the Digital Communications Workgroup on the Digital and Communications Affairs Council is Tackling Fake News

By Claudia Scandol

The main focus of one of the workgroups at this year’s Young European Council in the Digital and Communications Affairs Council was fake news and digital communications. This topic has been extremely salient of late in policy making circles due to the potential impact it has on the wider European populace and our delegates were excited to investigate the policy options and current actions. During a meeting with the carefully selected council advisers Mr. Joran Frik, Mr. Joe McNamee and Ms. Iva Tasheva, the delegates were able to get valuable feedback about their policies thus far, discuss further ideas and ask questions to experienced experts in the field.

The workgroup developed a policy draft in order to counter fake news where they focus on rewarding legitimate news sources as opposed to punishing and banning fake news sources. Team representative Catarina Burstoff was presenting the policy and emphasised one of the most important factors in this matter, being the people’s perception of fake news as real. The workgroup, led by Magdalena Surowiec from Poland, proposed a certificate based system whereby honourable journalists are given a sort of rating to indicate the reliability of their news sources. They proposed that the ratings should be given by an EU level expert group with as much independence as possible, and national and local scholars in order to overcome language barriers in smaller member states. The workgroup also suggested the utilisation of celebrities and media personalities in an influence campaign due their exposure and following to combat questionable sources.

When these proposals were presented to the expert advisers, they had many compliments and suggestions to give to the delegates which have helped to improve and streamline their work. Mr. Joe McNamee emphasised two of the major factors that influence the perpetuation of fake news – the prominence of “clicks” on bad news as opposed to good news and the speed at which fake news spreads and is believed by people.  Mr. Joran Frik added to McNamee’s thoughts on the propensity of and dissemination of negative and inflammatory headlines. On the other hand, Ms. Iva Tasheva focused her comments on the importance of education of the populace. The special advisers were also able to give some valuable criticism, which for delegate Antonio Božić from Croatia only helped to increase the validity and quality of their work. He sees their policy as not only realistic, but also feasible if they can take the adviser’s considerations into account.

Mr. Božić also shared the disagreements and challenges that his team faced when developing their policy, such as discussions on how to best address the problem (through a punishment of fake news sources versus promotion of legitimate sources) and how to best implement their grading system – how is it granted? Who is in charge? Ms. Tasheva also took this chance to advise caution on certificates as a policy solution – who polices the police? The delegates need to address this in order to create trust in the public, something which is vital to the issue of fake news. They decided to focus on promoting positive new sources as opposed to attempting to blacklist and ban fake news sources, as they are too easy to replicate. Instead, they want to public to engage with trustworthy and credible sources.

The team presented their final communiqué with the rest of the Digital and Communications Affairs Council on Thursday morning.

By Frida Hoffmann at YEC17

During the negotiations at the Labour Affairs Council of the Young European Council 2017, the issue of unpaid internships surfaced and became one of the leading motives of the Council.

We are in the age when sacrificing time to have valuable experience is the only way to get a well-paid job. I know it, you know it and the delegates know it. One negotiation after the other the participants gradually got into a sequence of heated debates on alternative solutions and possible outcomes. The working groups presented a Framework Agreement that defines trainees and interns as two separate entities both entitled of  “monetary salary or in kind”.

The problem is, as flagged by Max Uebe (who is the Head of Unit “Employment Strategy” in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion) that these issues have to first be resolved on the domestic level of each member state.

The European Union has no power to enact binding legislation based on Article 153(5) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Any regulation regarding pay is strictly in the realm of the member states. Consequently, only non-binding forms of EU action is available that enables the needed cooperation and communication. However, this still does not place enough pressure on the Member State, but only removes the latter from the Commission. An empty promise that never will be implemented? Yes, most probably.

If the EU has no competence over what Member States are doing, they could at least address this by paying their interns. As it happens, an estimated half of the current EU internships are full-time and unpaid.

After witnessing the different proposals and their barriers, I came to the conclusion that the best solution would be to abolish internships once and for all. The whole phenomenon of internships is faulty and full of errors. The EU will not legislate on it because it cannot. The Member States have more pressing issues and they are under no legal obligation from the EU and employers are generally glad to have unpaid workforce. The real problem is that ensuring that internships are paid positions would not even solve the situation. While paid internships look wonderful from the intern’s point of view, it would be a major financial setback for the employer, and would eventually result in no internships at all. Something that would definitely not look promising for those student, who would like to try themselves in the professional environment.

Instead of having lengthy internships, a shorter (maximum 2 weeks) unpaid, but more intense “work experience” might be a solution. This would provide an opportunity for students to get insights on specific fields, and still be eligible to apply for a job that actually pays during the holiday season.

 My personal experience is that a week-long unpaid internship is not as burdensome financially as running on no salary for 3 months and living up non-existing savings from my student loan.

One would argue that the concept of a short “work experience” would not guarantee the opportunity to learn. On that point, I strongly believe that the goal of a work experience is not to gain extensive knowledge about a job position. It is for the students to gain an insight,  and decide whether they would like to get more involved and apply for a graduate role or not. Work experience is quite frankly for experience that can be manifested in a variety of ways. This would require more effort from the employer to shift the focus from coffee making activities to more exciting tasks, that focus on personal development and learning new skills in an alternative way.

The problem of unpaid internships and the painful fact that these positions are only open for students with very stable financial background is more extensive and complex than most of us think. Like every single EU employment topic, it is in fact just as fragile and specific as unemployment, working condition or social security for every Member State. Getting to the end of it would surely require bold and clear actions. Can we really expect it to be happening in the near future though?

‘Cities are essential to our survival as a species in the 21st century’ – this statement voiced by Robert Muggah at the Smart City Expo World Congress highlights the daunting challenges that policy-makers, experts and citizens are facing in transforming our cities into smart, sustainable, and inclusive urban habitats. The Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, as the world’s leading event for smart city projects in the context of urban development, provided a platform to debate these pressing questions. YEL delegates Natalia, Natasa, Ania and Philipp had the opportunity to listen to and engage with smart city and technology experts from all over the world between the 14th-16th of November in Barcelona. After three days of enriching debates and discussions at the conference, five main insights prevail:

1. Interdependence: As the world is increasingly interconnected, there is a need for cities to act together across borders. Challenges such as climate change, air pollution, migration and questions of social hardships are most effectively addressed if cities work together and share their visions as well as best-practices.

2. Inclusion: Smart cities cannot be built without involving citizens in the process. Modern technologies allow us to connect different demographics within cities and empower previously less-privileged segments of our societies.

3. Leadership: Strong leadership is essential to make smart city projects work all around the globe. Many policy-makers and experts get preoccupied with technology, but they should rather focus on outcomes and act as role-models.

4. Technology: Technology provides the tools to make cities smarter, but needs to be incorporated into sound strategies. Emerging technologies such as the blockchain could radically alter the way we think about business transactions in the future and open-up entirely new use-cases in the field of urban governance.

5. Vision: Thinking about smart cities means thinking about complete holistic change. It is not enough for cities to simply procure and apply digital technologies, but rather about crafting a new paradigm of how we want to live in our cities in the future. We need to envision our cities in a different manner if we truly want to make them smart.

In addition, the trade fair that formed part of the event allowed to explore the newest technologies and smart applications that stand behind the transformation of our cities. From industry leaders that offer intelligent air traffic management systems to a start-up that allows pet owners to ‘park their dog’ and supervise via app – many companies, cities and institutions exhibited their innovative solutions that constitute the technological basis for smart cities. Altogether, the YEL delegates agreed that it is encouraging to see how the topic of smart cities is increasingly gaining traction. As the potential of applying smart technologies in our cities is receiving more political attention globally, it is imperative for young people to shape the agenda on the future of our cities. The YEL delegation in 2018 will hopefully continue on this path.