More Than a Seat at the Table: Youth Climate Leadership

About the Session Young people are frequently invited into climate and development spaces. They speak on panels, join advisory groups, attend global summits, and are celebrated as the next generation of leaders. But being present is not the same as having power. For youth-led organizations, particularly in the Global South, the gap is often visible in both funding and decision-making. Organizations may receive project grants while struggling to access the multi-year, flexible, and core funding required to build durable institutions. Young leaders may be consulted on priorities while having little authority over the decisions, resources, and strategies that follow. If young people are expected to help lead climate action, what would it mean to treat them as leaders now rather than leaders-in-waiting? That means examining who controls resources, who sets agendas, whose expertise carries weight, and what genuine youth-led protagonism looks like beyond representation. There is also a longer-term question. Youth leadership cannot depend on remaining young forever. What happens as prominent youth climate leaders age out of that identity? How can movements develop new generations of leadership while allowing existing leaders to grow, change roles, and build institutions that endure beyond an individual? This session will explore what it takes to move from youth participation to youth power, and what funders, development partners, governments, and movements need to change to make that shift real. What to Expect An intergenerational conversation about money, authority, representation, and leadership. Participants will examine where youth participation becomes tokenistic and what changes when young leaders have meaningful control over resources and decisions. The discussion will also look beyond individual leaders to the organizations and movements around them, including how flexible funding, succession, mentorship, and evolving leadership identities can sustain youth-led action over time. Who This Is For This session is for young climate and development leaders, youth-led and youth-serving organizations, philanthropists, development partners, governments, movement builders, and established leaders interested in shifting resources and decision-making power across generations. What You Will Get Out of It A clearer distinction between youth representation and meaningful decision-making power Approaches to providing accessible, multi-year, and core funding to youth-led organizations Perspectives from young leaders in the Global South on what genuine leadership requires Ideas for shifting power across generations without tokenizing young people A longer-term view of how youth-led movements and leaders can evolve as generations change