The Negotiation Café: A Climate Diplomacy Lab
The Negotiation Café equips youth climate negotiators with the skills to navigate power dynamics and secure impactful outcomes of their countries.
This program is led by Youth Climate Collective
The Negotiation Café is an intensive workshop designed to tackle the systemic and technical barriers that undermine inputs and strategic contributions of negotiators from under-developed countries. The program highlights systems and instances where power dynamics override technical capacity and goodwill to determine what gets added to the agenda. With this in mind, and understanding the bureaucracies that exist within international frameworks such as COP processes, we work with experts and professionals to deliver the Negotiation Cafe, supporting Youth Negotiators who are representing their countries, on key entry points to define lasting change in how goals are set, progresses are reviewed, and in securing finance for Loss and Damage.
Why the Negotiation Café Focuses on Supporting Youth Negotiators
The Negotiation Café addresses a pressing paradox: Many young people are driven by change, and most of this change will happen systemically, starting by unbundling the top-down approach that the youth demographic constantly deal with across board. The current diplomatic landscape favors well-resourced delegations with deep institutional knowledge, which often result in systemic imbalance where demands from frontline coalitions, countries, and indigenous platforms are not prioritized, usually upended by economic interests or delayed in the interest of developed nations. We’re addressing this systemic barrier by equipping young climate negotiators with the knowledge and skill needed to categorically shift how the negotiation process is approached, and in ensuring clear defined goals for regions they represent.
The workshop will be guided by the following key themes:
Deep insights into COP negotiation process
Uncovering Regional and Country-Level Priorities
Managing Activities within Sub-groups /Contact Groups
Text Review and Negotiations
Voting and Passing of Text
Coalition Building & Rallying Support for Shared Agenda
Translating Strategy into Diplomatic Shifts
The Negotiation Café represents a commitment to moving the needle where it counts. By patching this fundamental gap in technical and diplomatic capacity, we empower a new generation of climate leaders to secure a resilient and just future for all.