Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Environmental and Geographical Science Department, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Conserv Biol. 2024 Dec;38(6):e14387. doi: 10.1111/cobi.14387.
Youth are increasingly recognized for their important role in shaping environmental decisions surrounding conservation. Regrettably, youth who are crucial decision-makers are often excluded from environmental governance spaces due to structural barriers, both economic and political. As highlighted by recent environmental justice literature, this marginalization hinders their active participation in the decision-making process. The recent publication of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Youth Strategy 2022-2030 has brought prominent environmental organizations into the debate. The IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) presents a useful example from which to understand how youth access and participate in decision-making at the highest level of governance in a prominent global conservation organization. We used event ethnography and participant observation methods to study the WCC Forum in Marseille, France (2021). We sought to examine the geopolitical intricacies of power and the underlying inequalities at the root of youth engagement, or lack thereof. We considered the IUCN's engagement with youth, outlining the process from previous resolutions and recommendations to the publication of the IUCN Youth Strategy in 2022. The results from the youth narratives we compiled showed that youth are not a monolith, that tokenism should be challenged, and that youth have agency but require support. We argue that when youth are mobilized in metalevel decision-making spaces, their engagement is stratified and unequal. We situated youth engagement in decision-making through the perspective of environmental organizations as a contribution to environmental governance and youth literature.
青年在塑造围绕保护的环境决策方面的作用越来越得到认可。遗憾的是，由于经济和政治结构障碍，作为关键决策者的青年往往被排除在环境治理空间之外。正如最近的环境正义文献所强调的那样，这种边缘化阻碍了他们积极参与决策过程。最近发布的《国际自然保护联盟（IUCN）青年战略 2022-2030》使一些重要的环保组织加入了这场辩论。IUCN 世界自然保护大会（WCC）为我们理解青年如何在一个重要的全球保护组织的最高治理层面获得和参与决策提供了一个有用的范例。我们使用事件民族志和参与者观察方法研究了在法国马赛举行的 WCC 论坛（2021 年）。我们试图研究地缘政治的复杂性以及权力背后的不平等根源，这些不平等是导致青年参与或缺乏参与的根本原因。我们考虑了 IUCN 与青年的互动，概述了从之前的决议和建议到 2022 年 IUCN 青年战略发布的过程。我们汇编的青年叙述的结果表明，青年不是一个整体，象征性的参与应该受到挑战，青年有能动性，但需要支持。我们认为，当青年在元决策层面的决策空间中被动员起来时，他们的参与是分层和不平等的。我们从环境组织的角度来探讨青年在决策中的参与，这是对环境治理和青年文学的一个贡献。
