“We are just cheerleaders”: Youth's views on their participation in international forest-related decision-making fora

The failure of the multilateral processes to deliver comprehensive treaties has illuminated the importance of participatory and deliberative processes in global forest policy. There has been scholarly work on the role of different actors in global forest policy fora, including the roles of: environmental non-government organizations, private sector, public administrations, and scientific communities. However, literature search suggests studies on the participation of the youth groups are almost non-existent. Our research aimed to assess how youth delegates perceive their participation in the international forest-related conferences, and to identify areas that they think can improve their engagement in the international forest-related fora. We surveyed the youth participants of three international forest-related decision-making processes and fora: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF), and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Although they felt their participation was valued, a large majority of them suggested that the opportunities to express their opinions and ideas remain limited. More importantly, they were afraid that their views and ideas on how to deal with the current forest challenges were not taken into consideration. They further argued that the forest-related international conferences should provide more opportunities for youth to facilitate engagement with other groups, to share ideas, wisdom and solutions.