Helena Aida Voorhuis, a Burkinabe and Dutch youth representative, is a master’s student in Engineering and Policy Analysis at TU Delft. She attended the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belém do Pará, Brazil as a youth delegate with Save the Children Netherlands, and as a representative of the Local Conference of Youth (LCOY) from the UNFCCC youth constituency (YOUNGO). In this blog, she reflects on her first COP experience, tracing how just transitions, youth leadership, and Global South perspectives shaped both the negotiations and the spaces around them.
Arriving in Belém: The Amazon as a Backdrop
Last month, I travelled to COP30 in Belém do Pará, Brazil. After three layovers, two delays, and fifty-seven hours of travel, I finally looked out of the plane window to see a lush tapestry of forest cut through by long, meandering rivers, the Amazon Rainforest. As the small plane full of diplomats and activists landed, the cabin was filled with multilingual chatter spilled into the heat and thick humidity of Belém.
As temperatures climbed past thirty-five degrees, suits and ties quickly gave way to smart-casual clothing. Alongside the physical layers, this shift seemed to peel back some of the boundaries of formality, assumptions, and division. Belém — often called the “heart of the Amazon” — brought into sharp focus many of the struggles at the centre of the negotiations. It was layered reality of Indigenous presence, Afro-descendent culture, crippling poverty, insecurity, and the fight for development.
In this setting, just transitions felt less like a technical concept and more like a lived necessity. The question was not only how to decarbonise, but how to do so in a way that acknowledges history, confronts vulnerability, and protects the right to a dignified future.
Why I Attended COP30
Being from Burkina Faso, climate change was never an abstract concept. It was always more than data points in a research paper to me; it seemed to seep into all aspects of society, development, and conflict. This sparked my interest in tackling complex challenges at the intersection of social, environmental, and economic dimensions. My research focuses on participatory governance in the just energy transition, with a thesis on decentralised solar energy in rural Nigeria. In parallel, my work centres on bridging youth perspectives and local Global South realities with international climate negotiations and policies.
Specifically, through my role as Chair of International Affairs at Youth for Climate Netherlands, I helped organise the Dutch Local Conference of Youth (LCOY NL), which is part of the official youth process of the UNFCCC, coordinated through their youth constituency, YOUNGO. Across these national LCOYs, youth have developed a National Youth Statement, which feeds into the Global Youth Statement presented at COP. This year, I served as the official Dutch LCOY representative and attended the pre-COP Global Conference of Youth as part of this process.
Many people asked me what my goal at COP30 was. With it being my first COP, it was a daunting question, because your level of impact is not always in your own hands. I came as a youth delegate, holding Global North and Global South perspectives together. My purpose was to amplify youth and children’s perspectives in negotiations and to advocate for just transitions that take local realities and agency in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) into account. Ending up being so involved in the Just Transition negotiations was a real surprise.
The Pre-COP: Meeting the Prime Minister and Youth Foundations
When I arrived in Belém, I had the honour of meeting with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Dick Schoof, followed by the Dutch Climate Envoy, Prince Jaime de Bourbon de Parme, and the Dutch Ambassador to Brazil, Aldrik Gierveld. We held an engaging dialogue on advancing inclusive and ambitious climate action ahead of COP30. A highlight was gathering with inspiring youth leaders from Fiji, Chile, Peru and the Netherlands, each of whom represented diverse realities and impressive initiatives. At this meeting, we had UN Youth Representatives from the Netherlands, Tommy Blomvliet and Sarah Nasrawi, who both shared the goal of highlighting the realities of Global South youth in national and international agendas.
Many of the youth around the table were experienced negotiators, founders of organisations and long-standing advocates who guided and helped me over the intense days that followed.
As COP started, it revealed another world: exhausting, chaotic, and strangely communal. There were long mornings and even longer nights, surviving on conference venue food. But I found home and comfort in unexpected conversations. In Belém, that sense of community was amplified through the Brazilian context, the mutirão energy (collective effort), and the familiarity of Afro-descendent culture. People from different regions compared notes, built joint strategies, and found a shared purpose.
COP30: The Just Transition Negotiations
From the outset, I was struck by the strong presence of Burkina Faso and other African countries that showed some of the strongest support for meaningful youth participation. I had the honour to follow the negotiations closely behind HRH Princess Abze Djigma from Burkina Faso, a key negotiator on just transitions. From this position, it became clear how contested the meaning of “just transition” still is.
Just transition is a cross-cutting subject, meaning it intersects with mitigation, finance, technology, adaptation, human rights and development all at once. The negotiations were marked by clear tensions between country blocs. The Global North delegations pushed for ambitious but often siloed goals aligned with the Paris Agreement and the 1.5 degree target.
Meanwhile, G77-China and the LDCs emphasised the “just” dimension, the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), the right to development and poverty eradication. The CBDR-RC recognises that while all states must act on climate change, wealthier, high-emitting countries carry greater responsibility due to their historical emissions and greater capacity to act. There was a constant tension between collective climate ambition and prescriptive measures from the Global North that risked penalising countries without adequate financial backing. LDCs emphasised finance, technology and capacity, as well as universal access to affordable, reliable energy, including clean cooking. Across many sessions, G77 and LDCs also pushed for a concrete mechanism so that just transitions would not remain a purely aspirational concept.
Working through YOUNGO and other civil society constituencies, we contributed to the push for what became the Belem Action Mechanism (BAM).The Belem Action Mechanism (BAM) is a proposed global mechanism under the UNFCCC aimed at turning just transition from a principle into coordinated action, by linking policy, finance, technology and implementation support, particularly for the LDCs.
My Contributions: Participatory and Inclusive transitions
Clean cooking and participatory energy transitions
One of my key contributions was at an International Energy Agency (IEA) panel on “Youth as drivers for just energy transitions and access to clean energy opportunities” during the Global Conference of Youth.
Today, 2 billion people, around a quarter of the world’s population, still rely on open fires or basic stoves, breathing harmful smoke and spending hours collecting firewood, charcoal, or animal waste. Clean cooking access is a defining challenge for Africa’s development and prosperity. Globally, the number of people without access to clean cooking has halved since 2010, but in sub-Saharan Africa it continues to rise.
A lack of clean cooking harms health, economic development and the environment, contributing to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths annually, and significant deforestation. Women and children are most affected because they spend the most time near cooking fires. However, this challenge extends beyond financial or technological fixes, as the existing practices are deeply rooted in cultural norms.
Technology and science are not free from bias. The story I often share is that of a European designer who created an “efficient” electric stove sized for a three-person household. However, in Burkina Faso, most meals serve ten to fifteen people. The technology was not rejected due to poor designed, but because the stove was too small and did not fit the social reality. This is why participatory, co-designed transitions are not only the right approach, but they are also more effective. Communities must be included at the design stage from the very start: defining the problem, shaping the design and not only at implementation.
Youth are central to this. We have the capacity to learn and relearn, to maintain our cultures while seeing the world problems from new lenses. In most LDCs, youth are not only the future, but the majority of the population today. To exclude youth from these conversations is to simultaneously exclude the Global South.
“Looking ahead, as discussions now move towards a just transition and away from fossil fuels, in processes such as the Netherlands–Colombia initiative, youth and Global South actors need to sit at the centre of the design, not at the edges.”
Helena Aida Voorhuis
Locally led adaptation finance
At a panel on locally led adaptation finance mechanisms with Climate Action Network Southeast Asia (CANSEA), I spoke about youth as key actors for capacity-building initiatives, and reiterated the importance of including local actors. They should not carry only the weight of implementation, but their contributions, knowledge, lived realities and needs must shape the design of solutions and the way that finance is allocated. This reinforced the same principles and concepts that I had highlighted elsewhere: co-created solutions, community ownership, locally led adaptation, and bottom-up transitions.
Climate debt risk and structural barriers
At a press conference organised by the Change Initiative, I reflected on climate debt and structural vulnerability. As young people, we often want to look forward and focus on ambitious change, but sometimes we need to look behind at the weights or issues that are still holding us down. It is hard to put solar panels on a house that is breaking down. The Climate Debt Risk Index 2025 shows that many of the nations least responsible for climate change now shoulder the greatest financial burdens. For high-risk countries like Burkina Faso, climate-induced debt makes it nearly impossible to take agency in mitigation, poverty eradication or sustainable development at all.
Main Reflections and Takeaways
Across the negotiations, speaking spaces and side events, one reality became clear. Just transitions cannot be designed as purely technical exercises. They must be bottom-up, locally fitted and youth-centred. Capacity building must go beyond learning how to use imported technologies. We must build the ability to create and adapt systems locally. This reduces long-term dependency, allows solutions to reflect national realities, and opens space for local entrepreneurship and innovation.
In many speaking spaces, I was asked the same question: what does a just transition mean to you? My answer remained consistent. Just transitions are successful transitions. It is not a successful transition if renewable energy expands in one part of the world while another region is dying from mining, pollution, or burning harmful fuels just to survive – it is not a successful transition if my house is fully electric while people in my country are slowly dying from smoke inhalation to cook food. Pollution and environmental harm do not recognise borders. A successful transition must be shared, collective, and therefore just.
When the Smoke Clears: The COP30 Fire and the Path Ahead
Towards the end of the conference, I watched the roof above the Africa Pavilion and the Children and Youth Pavilion catch fire. These were the spaces where I had spent most of my time. They had been backdrops and safe havens throughout the weeks. Seeing them burn was a visceral metaphor for the vulnerable communities who suffer most from the impacts of climate change. Yet as the fire struck above the Children and Youth Pavilion and the Africa Pavilion, another image stayed with me. As the smoke cleared, the sense of community became even clearer. People acted as doctors, taking care of those hurt during the incident, while the youth delegates organised to help people find lost items and each other.
Looking ahead, as discussions now move towards a just transition and away from fossil fuels, in processes such as the Netherlands–Colombia initiative, youth and Global South actors need to sit at the centre of the design, not at the edges. Ambition without inclusion is fragile. Inclusion without real power is tokenistic. If COP30 has shown anything, it is that just transitions will not be delivered for us. They must be built with us, or they will not be just at all.
About Helena Aida Voorhuis
Helena Aida Voorhuis is a Master’s student in Engineering and Policy Analysis at TU Delft, focusing on just socio-technical transitions and climate governance. She holds an Honours BSc in Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University, where she specialised in policy and economics and conducted research on participatory governance in decentralised solar energy transitions in rural Nigeria. Helena serves as Chair of International Affairs at Youth for Climate Netherlands and was a lead organiser of the Dutch Local Conference of Youth (LCOY), as well as a member of the youth constituency of the UNFCCC, YOUNGO. Her work bridges youth governance, energy transitions, and Global South climate policy.
