Global Youth Statement 2025: Food & Agriculture

A newer edition of this statement is now available: see the Global Youth Statement 2026: Food & Agriculture, built for COP31.

YOUNGO calls on Parties to place food and agriculture at the center of climate action. Agriculture and food systems are vital to adaptation, mitigation, and resilience, yet smallholders, youth, women, and Indigenous Peoples remain underrepresented in decision-making and underfunded in climate finance. At COP30, Parties must deliver ambitious, inclusive, and just outcomes for food systems that advance human rights, climate justice, and intergenerational equity.

Four Sets of Demands

1. Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on Agriculture and Food Security (SSJWA)

• Translate SSJWA outcomes into NDCs, NAPs, and national food systems pathways, with national focal points mandated to report annually through the SSJWA online portal.
• Establish an intergenerational agroecological transition funding stream giving youth access to training, land, and finance, connected to mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund.
• Position children and youth as lead actors (facilitators and speakers, not just participants) in SSJWA workshops.

2. Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA)

• Finalize and adopt GGA indicators disaggregated by age, gender, income, and geography, to measure children- and youth-specific outcomes.
• Recognize agroecology as a key adaptation approach under the Baku Adaptation Roadmap, with co-benefits for soil health and water resilience.
• Secure a new Adaptation Finance Commitment at least three times the scale of the expiring Glasgow Doubling Pledge, by 2030.

3. Climate Finance

• Guarantee direct, grant-based, simplified access to climate finance via dedicated youth finance windows, earmarking at least 10% of the post-2025 climate finance goal for smallholder and youth-led agriculture.
• Scale up finance for agroecology and youth-led innovation, with independent monitoring to verify it reaches intended beneficiaries directly.
• Explicitly avoid financing large-scale industrial biofuels and carbon market schemes lacking integrity safeguards.

4. Just Transition

• Mainstream agriculture and food systems as a central pillar of a global Just Transition mechanism.
• Secure land rights for youth, women, and Indigenous Peoples through restorative justice and support for intergenerational farm transfer.
• Guarantee decent work and diversified livelihoods for rural youth and women through capacity-building tied to climate finance.

COP30 must result in ambitious and actionable outcomes that drive a just and sustainable transformation of food systems, securing full inclusion of children and youth, women, gender-diverse people, Indigenous Peoples, and smallholders in all stages of climate decision-making and implementation.

Read the Full Statement