Last week I was invited to a youth engagement workshop ahead of the annual United Nations conference, COP31 by Presidency Youth Climate Champion, Sally Higgins, a farmer from regional Queensland who recently completed her Nuffield on renewable land use competition and food security Presidency Youth Climate Champion | UNFCCC.

As the COP31 Presidency Youth Climate Champion, Sally Higgins has been appointed to help ensure young people globally are meaningfully engaged throughout the COP31 journey and that this opportunity leaves a lasting legacy for youth participation, leadership and influence beyond the conference itself.

I was selected as a representative of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association and spoke to the experiences, priorities and perspectives of the NTCA and the Northern Territory. Here are some of the things I learnt;

• For the first time, Australia, through Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, will serve as President of Negotiations for a UN climate COP.
• There are way too many different organisations, acronyms and groups all locked in one “climate change’ silo.
• Every conversation is a climate conversation, we just use words like ‘drought proofing’, ‘erosion mitigation’ or ‘efficiency’.
• Most of the people in the room have never been to the NT, most had never thought about the impacts on the pastoral industry, on agriculture or northern Australia – and all were extremely eager to hear, more than I had time to talk about.
• Everyone could acknowledge there was a huge divide between regional and metro areas. This was a key theme across the day and was at the heart of one of the priorities set.
• People were amazed by Beef Centrals Carbon Central page, genuinely.

Overall, it was a fantastic day, filled with incredible young people from across the country that are keen to do things different, keen to listen, keen to do better. I was very proud to be able to represent this fantastic industry and our fantastic Members on a stage that leads to the annual United Nations climate change conference.