Greta Thunberg and the transnational youth climate elite(s)
(2023) International Studies Association Annual Convention — Location: Montréal (15.March.2023)
Files
No attached file found for this publication.
Details
- Authors
Kang, Yi hyun 
- Abstract
- Greta Thunberg has gained increasing attention in global climate politics, including at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This recent attention on her can be attributed to the Fridays for Future movement she initiated. But while the number of youth participants has increased in international climate conferences Greta Thunberg still stands at the center of media attention. Why is it so? Is she representative of the global youth movement? Is she rather representing a sort of transnational youth climate elite? Does such transnational elite exist? This paper looks into the profile of youth participants at the UNFCCC COPs to answer these questions. We focus, in a first step, on prominent young individuals including Greta Thunberg, but also the members of the UN Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change established in 2020, and of the organizing team of YOUNGO, the official UNFCCC youth constituency. We then compare their profiles to the profiles of all youth participants in the UNFCCC process, retrieved from our Youth Earth research database. We also use qualitative interviews and a survey. Overall, our paper sheds light on the potential of the transnational youth climate elite.
- Affiliations
Citations
Orsini, A., & Kang, Y. h. (2023). Greta Thunberg and the transnational youth climate elite(s). International Studies Association Annual Convention, Montréal.