A colonized COP: Indigenous exclusion and youth climate justice activism at the United Nations climate change negotiations

Youth activists around the world are demanding urgent climate action from elected leaders. The annual United Nations climate change negotiations, known as COPs, are key sites of global organizing and hope for a comprehensive approach to climate policy. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews at COP25 in 2019, this research examines youth climate activists’ priorities, frustrations and hopes for creating just climate policy. Youth are disillusioned with the COP process and highlight a variety of ways through which the COP perpetuates colonial power structures that marginalize Indigenous peoples and others fighting for justice. This is intersectional exclusion – the character of exclusion experienced by people with multiple intersecting marginalized identities. We demonstrate that the space, policies and even the social movement organizing at COP25 are exclusive, necessitating new ways of negotiating, building relationships, and imagining climate solutions that centre Indigenous communities, and protect and return to them the lands on which they depend. As the youth climate justice movement grows, attending to Indigenous priorities will help it transform, rather than reinforce, the systems at the root of climate crisis and to challenge existing policymaking structures.

BackgroundResearch carried out in partnership with Indigenous youth at The Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) demonstrates that Indigenous youth can (and do) develop and implement public health interventions amongst their peers and within their communities, when supported by non-youth allies and mentors.MethodsTogether, NYSHN and Well Living House researchers co-designed a qualitative case study to demonstrate and document how Indigenous youth can and do practice their own form of public health implementation research (PHIR) in the realm of mental health promotion for 2SLGBTTQQIA and Gender Non-Conforming Indigenous youth. Academic and Indigenous youth researchers were: participant observers; conducted a focus group; and designed and implemented an online survey with Indigenous youth project participants. Governance, intellectual property, financial terms and respective academic and NYSHN roles and responsibilities were negotiated using a customized community research agreement. The data were thematically analyzed using a critical decolonizing lens that recognizes the historic and ongoing marginalization of Indigenous peoples while also highlighting the unique and diverse strengths of Indigenous communities’ knowledge and practice in maintaining their health and wellbeing.ResultsAnalysis revealed how colonialism and intergenerational trauma have impacted Indigenous youth identity and the value of self-determination as it relates to their identity, their relationships, health and wellbeing. We also learned how knowing and doing about and for Indigenous youth needs to be youth determined – ‘nothing about us, without us’ -- yet also supported by allies. Finally, our analysis shares some promising practices in knowing and doing for and with Indigenous youth.ConclusionsThis study provides a reminder of the need to centre Indigenous youth throughout PHIR in order to realize sustainable benefit from research, services and programming. It emphasizes the need to recognize Indigenous youth as leaders and partners in these initiatives, support their efforts to self-determine, compensate them as partners, and prioritize Indigenous youth-determined frameworks and accountability mechanisms.

BackgroundAdult smoking has its roots in adolescence. If individuals do not initiate smoking during this period it is unlikely they ever will. In high income countries, smoking rates among Indigenous youth are disproportionately high. However, despite a wealth of literature in other populations, there is less evidence on the determinants of smoking initiation among Indigenous youth. The aim of this study was to explore the determinants of smoking among Australian Indigenous young people with a particular emphasis on the social and cultural processes that underlie tobacco use patterns among this group.MethodsThis project was undertaken in northern Australia. We undertook group interviews with 65 participants and individual in-depth interviews with 11 youth aged 13–20 years led by trained youth ‘peer researchers.’ We also used visual methods (photo-elicitation) with individual interviewees to investigate the social context in which young people do or do not smoke. Included in the sample were a smaller number of non-Indigenous youth to explore any significant differences between ethnic groups in determinants of early smoking experiences. The theory of triadic influence, an ecological model of health behaviour, was used as an organising theory for analysis.ResultsFamily and peer influences play a central role in smoking uptake among Indigenous youth. Social influences to smoke are similar between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth but are more pervasive (especially in the family domain) among Indigenous youth. While Indigenous youth report high levels of exposure to smoking role models and smoking socialisation practices among their family and social networks, this study provides some indication of a progressive denormalisation of smoking among some Indigenous youth.ConclusionsFuture initiatives aimed at preventing smoking uptake in this population need to focus on changing social normative beliefs around smoking, both at a population level and within young peoples’ immediate social environment. Such interventions could be effectively delivered in both the school and family environments. Specifically, health practitioners in contact with Indigenous families should be promoting smoke free homes and other anti-smoking socialisation behaviours.

Objective: This research explores the determinants influencing youth engagement in climate change policy, focusing on the roles of awareness, concern, self-efficacy, attitudes, and personal norms in shaping policy participation intentions. Additionally, it examines the mediating effects of concern, efficacy, attitudes, and personal norms within the relationship between awareness and intention. Theoretical Framework: The research framework integrates the Theory of Planned Behavior, Risk Perception Theory, and Social Cognitive Theory, providing a multi-faceted perspective on the motivations for youth climate policy participation. Method: Applying structural equation modeling (SEM) with a phantom model approach, this study analyzes survey data from 600 adolescents aged 14 to 19. The phantom model approach enables a precise evaluation of both direct and indirect pathways, allowing for the re-specification of indirect effects as total effects in independent models, yielding robust estimates and confidence intervals across mediation pathways. Results and Discussion: The findings indicate that awareness alone does not directly catalyze intentions to participate. Instead, significant indirect effects are observed, with concern, efficacy, attitudes, and personal norms acting as critical mediators. This intricate interaction highlights the importance of fostering these psychological dimensions to facilitate youth engagement in climate policy efforts. Research Implications: The study’s outcomes offer actionable insights for the development of climate education and policy initiatives that bolster youth agency. By cultivating self-efficacy and constructive attitudes, these programs may enhance youth contributions to climate governance. Originality/Value: This study advances understanding of youth engagement in climate policy by examining a comprehensive model in which awareness shapes intentions indirectly through mediators such as concern, efficacy, attitudes, and personal norms. Addressing gaps left by prior studies, it clarifies the psychological mechanisms that drive youth participation, highlighting the essential role of these factors in empowering meaningful youth involvement in climate governance.

Beyond tokenism: meaningful youth engagement in planetary health

BackgroundPopulation and environmental health research illustrate a positive relationship between access to greenspace or natural environments and peoples’ perceived health, mental health, resilience, and overall well-being. This relationship is also particularly strong among Canadian Indigenous populations and social determinants of health research where notions of land, health, and nature can involve broader spiritual and cultural meanings. Among Indigenous youth health and resilience scholarship, however, research tends to conceptualize land and nature as rural phenomena without any serious consideration on their impacts within urban cityscapes. This study contributes to current literature by exploring Indigenous youths’ meaning-making processes and engagements with land and nature in an urban Canadian context.MethodsThrough photovoice and modified Grounded Theory methodology, this study explored urban Indigenous youth perspectives about health and resilience within an inner-city Canadian context. Over the course of one year, thirty-eight in-depth interviews were conducted with Indigenous (Plains Cree First Nations and Métis) youth along with photovoice arts-based and talking circle methodologies that occurred once per season. The research approach was also informed by Etuaptmumk or a “two-eyed seeing” framework where Indigenous and Western “ways of knowing” (worldviews) can work alongside one another.ResultsOur strength-based analyses illustrated that engagement with and a connection to nature, either by way of being present in nature and viewing nature in their local urban context, was a central aspect of the young peoples’ photos and their stories about those photos. This article focuses on three of the main themes that emerged from the youth photos and follow-up interviews: (1) nature as a calming place; (2) building metaphors of resilience; and (3) providing a sense of hope. These local processes were shown to help youth cope with stress, anger, fear, and other general difficult situations they may encounter and navigate on a day-to-day basis.ConclusionsThis study contributes to the literature exploring Indigenous youths’ meaning-making process and engagements with land and nature in an urban context, and highlights the need for public health and municipal agencies to consider developing more culturally safe and meaningful natural environments that can support the health, resilience, and well-being of Indigenous youth within inner-city contexts.

Tunisia has made an explicit commitment to climate action from a gendered perspective with the adoption of an Action Plan on Gender and Climate Change in 2022. The plan adds to an array of existing strategies that are challenging to implement. The country is among those in the MENA region most at risk from the impact of climate projections on socio-economic factors. This paper draws on a review of the literature and legal and policy framework on climate change, along with an analysis of existing quantitative data on the Tunisian case. This is combined with qualitative empirical field research, conducted from April to August 2024 through in-depth interviews with national institutions (6), civil society (3), and key informants (4) and focus groups (6) with rightsholders of international cooperation programmes. Using an intersectional feminist policy analysis framework combined with a socio- economic analysis, the paper provides an overview of Tunisia’s climate policies from a gender perspective. It addresses three specific areas of inquiry: first, the evolution of national strategies on climate over time and key inflection points in Tunisia’s political history and how they shaped climate policies; second, the scope for complementarity and trade-offs between international actors and domestic agency in Tunisia’s climate strategies; third, the paper analyses crucial elements of Tunisia’s gender climate governance and policies and highlights some critical issues for future research.

Navigating Precarities:Agency, Intergenerational Care, and Counter-Narratives among Indigenous Migrant Youth Diane Sabenacio Nititham (bio) Heidbrink, Lauren. Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation. Stanford UP, 2020. 240 pp. $25.00 pb. ISBN 9781503612075. In Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation, anthropologist Lauren Heidbrink shares the perspectives of unaccompanied youth migrants from Guatemala to Mexico and the United States. She urges scholars to rethink common perceptions of youth as "non-agents" in need of protection and to re-evaluate the idea that youth migration is disconnected from the underlying social and political institutions that engender migration. This multi-sited ethnography offers rich and thorough evidence that migration is not simply a linear journey and that youth are neither helpless nor passive. Through the counter-narratives of Indigenous youth, Heidbrink brings to life the impact of the nexus of institutional apparatuses, migration, and deportation on individuals and their communities. Heidbrink's background as an ethnographer and engaged public scholar is clear through her approach. The text offers readers rich descriptions and deep understandings of how Indigenous youth in Guatemala sit at the intersections of transnational processes, externalized borders, securitized development, genocide, and violence. Drawing on multiple methods of data collection conducted over several years, Heidbrink utilizes observations and in-depth interviews along with mixed-methods community-based research, including workshops, video and photo elicitation, walking ethnographies, and a community household survey. In partnership with Indigenous organizations, teachers, and older youth, this comprehensive and multilingual approach (English, Spanish, and K'iche' and Mam) is attuned to the ways in which migration is used as an intergenerational strategy to navigate marginalization and precarity. The text is both thought-provoking and gripping. In sharing the counter-narratives of diverse Indigenous youth, Heidbrink makes visible [End Page 183] how they understand and respond to their migration circumstances. They are active agents, navigating local economies, transnational social networks, and global processes as they migrate from Guatemala to Mexico and the United States. In each of the book's seven chapters, Heidbrink reminds the reader that the values, experiences, and decisions of youth do not exist in a vacuum. Violence, intergenerational trauma, and legacies of colonialism and conflict are always present for Indigenous communities, even if the ways in which they take form are not always explicit. Providing the social and political contexts of youth migration in each chapter imparts a pressing urgency. It is also helpful for educators who may choose to assign isolated chapters instead of the entire book, as each chapter can stand alone with informational framing for students who may be new to the topic. The first two chapters focus on how Indigenous youth conceptualize and understand their migration. In chapter 1, "Youth as Agents, Caregivers, and Migrants," Heidbrink problematizes and interrogates the framing of economic migrants as simply making individual choices to improve their quality of life. Whether engaging in seasonal, internal, and/or transnational migration, youth migration becomes delinked from the conditions that motivate it when it is viewed as an individual rather than a public issue. These predicating events can include historical genocide, armed conflict, and migration management decisions. Further, the application of an intersectional lens emphasizes how embodied trauma and racialized, politicized geographies shape the emotional and social lives of youth and their families, their meaning-making processes, and what is at stake when youth do decide to migrate. Because migration is deeply woven into the social fabric, even when youth do not migrate themselves, the consequences reach far beyond the individual and their families: they also have significant impacts on households and communities. Thus, reframing economic migration provides depth to the varying degrees of agency that Indigenous youth have within interconnected global systems. Chapter 2, "Widening the Frame," focuses on the disconnect between how youth and those in power make meaning of migration and deportation. Increasingly restrictive policies, media campaigns, and public service announcements try to keep migrants from moving. [End Page 184] While these messages are framed around protecting youth, they contain dehumanizing discourses around Indigenous youth, their parents, and their identities. Heidbrink uses a multimedia elicitation focus group to give youth a space to respond to these discourses and how they both...

Globalization and the movement of workers across borders in search of a better life or employment are presenting healthcare systems and researchers with problems of increasing complexity. This study focused on how migrant workers in Thailand from the Lao People's Democratic Republic conceptualized their stress and stressing factors. Participant observation, in-depth interviews, and field notes were employed in the study, which analyzed data from seventy subjects through qualitative content analysis. The migrant workers in this sample perceived stress as a state of being unable to fulfill their preferences or expectations revolving around issues of: living with poverty, employment, loneliness, poor relationships, competition in the workplace combined with job uncertainty, and invisibility. To provide care for the minority migrant workers, nurses need to focus on identifying how these users perceive stress, and urgent action and further research are needed.

This article invites the reader on a journey through the legal arguments that would confirm the application of the United Nations (UN) climate change regime to belligerent occupations. Although the regime is silent on this issue, its application should not be limited to peacetime due to the seriousness of global climate change and its adverse effects on the environment and living entities. A harmonious interpretation and application of the UN climate change regime and the law of occupation would allow Occupying Powers to ensure the safety and well-being of the civilian population and contribute to the protection of the Earth's climate system.

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> From the wide range of possibilities, we propose an instrument capable of measuring annual changes in global Spectral Outgoing Radiation (SORa) from the entire Earth's surface between 200 nm and 1100 nm with a stability of 0.1 Wm^-2 over a period of one solar cycle or beyond. Photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) as detectors provide data with a cadence of one second and high dynamic range. Based on Total Solar Radiation TSI(t) data with a stability of 0.01 Wm^-2 per year, Spectral Solar Irradiance SSI(t) can be derived and normalized to &Sigma;SSI(t)=TSI(t) for using the Sun as a referenced radiation source supported by solar modeling. Calibrated by SSI(t), a set of 12 spectrometers with 60 PMTs in total and 16 photometers simultaneously detect SOR(t). This database can also be provided to calibrate other space instruments to allow improved comparison of results. In previous missions in space, it has already been shown that the spectrometer design can detect both solar and terrestrial radiation with high dynamic range. The established measurement technique compensates for degradation through repeated calibration. The instrument also enables the determination of the global green Earth coverage and its annual changes by measuring chlorophyll absorption from 350 nm to 490 nm and 620 nm to 690 nm and green backscatter from 500 nm to 600 nm. Mapping the Earth will also make it possible to track annual local changes in green coverage and to assess the impact of different climate policies and climate engineering actions. Another aspect is the derivation of a correction parameter for the Earth Energy Imbalance derived from changes in green areas. Data evaluation can also include determining further parameters such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, the Enhanced Vegetation Index, and the Global Leaf Area Index.

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> From the wide range of possibilities, we propose an instrument capable of measuring annual changes in global Spectral Outgoing Radiation (SORa) from the entire Earth's surface between 200 nm and 1100 nm with a stability of 0.1 Wm^-2 over a period of one solar cycle or beyond. Photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) as detectors provide data with a cadence of one second and high dynamic range. Based on Total Solar Radiation TSI(t) data with a stability of 0.01 Wm^-2 per year, Spectral Solar Irradiance SSI(t) can be derived and normalized to &Sigma;SSI(t)=TSI(t) for using the Sun as a referenced radiation source supported by solar modeling. Calibrated by SSI(t), a set of 12 spectrometers with 60 PMTs in total and 16 photometers simultaneously detect SOR(t). This database can also be provided to calibrate other space instruments to allow improved comparison of results. In previous missions in space, it has already been shown that the spectrometer design can detect both solar and terrestrial radiation with high dynamic range. The established measurement technique compensates for degradation through repeated calibration. The instrument also enables the determination of the global green Earth coverage and its annual changes by measuring chlorophyll absorption from 350 nm to 490 nm and 620 nm to 690 nm and green backscatter from 500 nm to 600 nm. Mapping the Earth will also make it possible to track annual local changes in green coverage and to assess the impact of different climate policies and climate engineering actions. Another aspect is the derivation of a correction parameter for the Earth Energy Imbalance derived from changes in green areas. Data evaluation can also include determining further parameters such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, the Enhanced Vegetation Index, and the Global Leaf Area Index.

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> From the wide range of possibilities, we propose an instrument capable of measuring annual changes in global Spectral Outgoing Radiation (SORa) from the entire Earth's surface between 200 nm and 1100 nm with a stability of 0.1 Wm^-2 over a period of one solar cycle or beyond. Photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) as detectors provide data with a cadence of one second and high dynamic range. Based on Total Solar Radiation TSI(t) data with a stability of 0.01 Wm^-2 per year, Spectral Solar Irradiance SSI(t) can be derived and normalized to &Sigma;SSI(t)=TSI(t) for using the Sun as a referenced radiation source supported by solar modeling. Calibrated by SSI(t), a set of 12 spectrometers with 60 PMTs in total and 16 photometers simultaneously detect SOR(t). This database can also be provided to calibrate other space instruments to allow improved comparison of results. In previous missions in space, it has already been shown that the spectrometer design can detect both solar and terrestrial radiation with high dynamic range. The established measurement technique compensates for degradation through repeated calibration. The instrument also enables the determination of the global green Earth coverage and its annual changes by measuring chlorophyll absorption from 350 nm to 490 nm and 620 nm to 690 nm and green backscatter from 500 nm to 600 nm. Mapping the Earth will also make it possible to track annual local changes in green coverage and to assess the impact of different climate policies and climate engineering actions. Another aspect is the derivation of a correction parameter for the Earth Energy Imbalance derived from changes in green areas. Data evaluation can also include determining further parameters such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, the Enhanced Vegetation Index, and the Global Leaf Area Index.

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> From the wide range of possibilities, we propose an instrument capable of measuring annual changes in global Spectral Outgoing Radiation (SORa) from the entire Earth's surface between 200 nm and 1100 nm with a stability of 0.1 Wm^-2 over a period of one solar cycle or beyond. Photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) as detectors provide data with a cadence of one second and high dynamic range. Based on Total Solar Radiation TSI(t) data with a stability of 0.01 Wm^-2 per year, Spectral Solar Irradiance SSI(t) can be derived and normalized to &Sigma;SSI(t)=TSI(t) for using the Sun as a referenced radiation source supported by solar modeling. Calibrated by SSI(t), a set of 12 spectrometers with 60 PMTs in total and 16 photometers simultaneously detect SOR(t). This database can also be provided to calibrate other space instruments to allow improved comparison of results. In previous missions in space, it has already been shown that the spectrometer design can detect both solar and terrestrial radiation with high dynamic range. The established measurement technique compensates for degradation through repeated calibration. The instrument also enables the determination of the global green Earth coverage and its annual changes by measuring chlorophyll absorption from 350 nm to 490 nm and 620 nm to 690 nm and green backscatter from 500 nm to 600 nm. Mapping the Earth will also make it possible to track annual local changes in green coverage and to assess the impact of different climate policies and climate engineering actions. Another aspect is the derivation of a correction parameter for the Earth Energy Imbalance derived from changes in green areas. Data evaluation can also include determining further parameters such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, the Enhanced Vegetation Index, and the Global Leaf Area Index.

Taking “Seven-Surname Property-Owning Ancestral Worship Association of Tik-tsam-sia”(hereafter as SPAWA) as the subject of research, the purpose of this project is to explore the historical development process of this organization as well as the experience of ethnic identity among members of this organization. Based upon above examination, this project also aims to sort out the typology of ethnic identity among Plains Aborigines of Tik-tsam-sia, and to describe the dynamic mechanism that shapes these specific types of ethnic identity. The Austronesian people was originally the only master that dwelled in the island of Taiwan. Starting from the 17th century, due to the ethnic contact and interaction with Hoklo and Hakka, these people were gradually assimilated and lost their identity as the master eventually. Not until the new era of “Post-Martial-Law” was coming, did there occur an opportunity for the Taiwanese Aborigines, including members of Tik-tsam-sia, to search for their identity. What on earth happened to the Plains Aborigines of Tik-tsam-sia in the last few centuries? How the future development goes? These are the major problematics probed in this study. The major research questions are stated as follows: 1). What is the historical evolution process of Tik-tsam-sia? How the members of the SPAWA develop a change on identity? 2). During different historical stages, what are the role and function of the SPAWA in keeping solidarity among her members? 3). What is the life history narrative in connection with “ethnic experience” presented by the descendents of SPAWA by way of in-depth interview? 4). Based upon above narrative, what is the “status/type” of ethnic identity of these interviewees? 5). In terms of the generation mechanism, in which way could we explain the aforementioned “status/type” of ethnic identity, especially the Plain Aborigines identity? I would answer the first two questions in Chapter Two and responded the third question in Chapter Three. In terms of the forth as well as fifth questions, I would discuss in Chapter Four. As for the research design is concerned, three methods --- document study, in-depth interview, and participant observation --- are adopted in this study. First of all, I would use document study to comprehend the history of Tik-tsam-sia. Then, in-depth interview is adopted to explore the ethnicity-relevant narratives stated by the member of SPAWA. Finally, participant observation is applied while taking part of the worship activity held by Tik-tsam-sia for getting a grip on her cultural patterns and meaning. The findings of this research are stated in the following way: 1). To some extent, the history of Tik-tsam-sia could be understood as an epitome of destiny of Taiwanese Aborigines. Following professor Shih-chung Hsieh’s framework, the history of ethnic contacts of Taiwanese Aborigines could be divided into four stages --- the stage of being the only master, the stage of being one of the masters, the stage of being conquered, and the stage of ready-to-disappear. 2). In terms of the function and role of SPAWA (and her forerunner), during the Qing era, it was basically a place for rent collection and ancestral worship. After entering the Japanese era, SPAWA was formally established and played a significant role in keeping solidarity among her members. 3). Almost all of the interviewees know their “aboriginal” roots and express their identity as both Plain Aborigines and Hakka at the same time. However, in public situations, there are still quite a number of them, declare their Hakka identity only, due to the stigmatized nature of their aboriginal identity. 4). The interviewees from different surnames demonstrate different degree of attachment toward their “aboriginal” identity. While some give equal weight to both Hakka and Plain Aboriginal identity, some others give priority to their Hakka identity than the Plain Aborigines identity, and the others put emphasis on their Plain Aboriginal identity than the Hakka identity. There are a few who even only recognize their Hakka identity. Through the application of the “Continuum of Biracial Identity,” four types of ethnic identity are found in this study: (1). Plain Aborigines with Hakka origin; (2). Plain Aborigines/Hakka; (3). Hakka with Plain Aborigines; and (4). Hakka. 5). In the light of the “Political Process Theory” adopted from social movement literature, four factors are identified to explain the emergence of Plain Aboriginal identity among members of SPAWA --- broad socio-economic processes, expanding political opportunities, indigenous organizational strength, and cognitive liberation. Keywords: Tik-tsam-sia, Plain Aborigines, Ethnic identity, Seven-Surname Property-Owning Ancestral Worship Association of Tik-tsam-sia (SPAWA), Political process theory