Arianna Abdul-Nour speaks to James Cracknell about her role with the UK’s youth delegation to Cop28

International relations expert Arianna Abdul-Nour grew up in Southgate

Arianna Abdul-Nour says she is “ambitious” with what her delegation can achieve in the run-up to Cop28, the latest big climate conference scheduled to take place in Dubai later this year.

As part of the Future Leaders Network, the Southgate resident has been selected as co-head of the UK youth delegation for the United Nations event starting in November.

The delegation is made up of four young people who “care passionately about accelerating climate action and ensuring youth voices are heard” and their remit is to identify climate policies that young people want decision-makers to adopt – and then advocate for them.

Arianna, an international relations graduate, says: “We need to work out what the issues are and communicate that with people who have the power to do something about it.”

Before the conference begins, the delegation will put together four policies that they wish to prioritise.

“Every policy we make, we put whether it is ambitious or realistic next to it. Although we know a certain country might not agree to it, we don’t want to just have realistic policies because we need to be ambitious as well.”

Cop (‘Conference of the Parties’) events have long been the world’s primary forum for discussing global solutions to man-made climate change but, with a few notable exceptions such as the Cop21 talks in 2015 that led to the Paris Agreement, the conferences have become infamous for the repeated failure of the 195 countries taking part to agree on how – and how fast – to reduce carbon emissions.

Expectations are low for Cop28 in Dubai, partly because of the host city’s strong connections to the oil and gas industry in the Middle East. Arianna remains hopeful but admits it is never easy to reach agreements on an international level.

“It is often about the leaders turning up and getting photos taken while the delegates do the real work!” she says. “Alok Sharma was really close [at Cop26 in Glasgow] to pushing this ban on coal through, but the nuance of a sentence meant India rejected it.

“So it is about identifying what people want and making sure the policies are robust and non-negotiable, so when it does get presented we have already anticipated what might come up and have alternatives ready.”

The three stated aims of the UK youth delegation are to speak to a diverse range of young people and “confidently represent the youth voice to decision-makers on the global stage”; identify climate policies that “resonate with young people and would deliver on their priorities”; and advocate for these policies by “meeting with officials, politicians and other industry leaders”, as well as through the media and via in-person forums.

To land her voluntary role as part of the delegation, Arianna had to go through several rounds of applications, including a video submission and interview. The former Ashmole Academy pupil thinks her academic background helped secure her place.

“My masters thesis was on internal displacement in Iraq […] there is an intersection there with climate change – it is a human crisis and there will be climate migrants and a domino effect as a result.”

Outside of her role with the UK’s Cop28 youth delegation, Arianna works with the United Nations Association, engaging young people in diplomacy, and as a researcher both at the John Locke Institute and the European Institute of Research and Human Rights. In another volunteering role, she has also been teaching English to refugees at a camp in Jordan.

All of this experience makes Arianna well-equipped to handle discussions that could determine the fate of the planet. “I have always thought it was the end goal for me to be a delegate because it is an amazing opportunity,” she says. “We have a lot of flexibility and power and I am very excited.

“We have lot of scope to do what we want – we can go to different places and talk to different people – but [we have to] balance a lot of things, so we can’t take up all the opportunities that are out there.”

Does she have a strategy in mind? “We are not trying to reinvent the wheel because a lot of research has been done already, but we are seeking to have all the facts we can to make sure we are not blind-sided and know what other people’s agendas are.

“As the UK, people think we have a lot of clout, and we get a lot of emails from different countries to discuss things with us.”

To get in touch with Arianna and the UK youth delegation to Cop28:
Email [email protected]

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