The materiality of youth representation at climate summits: navigating barriers, routes, and spaces

Recent decades have seen institutionalized procedures for youth representation in global climate governance, and significant visibility for youth climate activists. Despite these improvements, young representatives continue to bear witness about tokenized forms of participation and a lack of influence. This article seeks to address this ambiguous development by focusing on the materiality of youth representation in United Nations climate conferences. Through interviews and participant observations at COP26 and COP27, as well as COY16 and COY17, we analyse the bureaucratic and socio-economic barriers to representation, the knowledge resources and competitiveness of the routes to representation, and the spatial ordering and subversive tactics on site at the summits. We show that these materialities shape youth's discursive strategies, thus helping to explain who gets to be a representative and what forms of subjectivities, agendas, claims, and strategies that become possible in the global climate governance regime.