In my series on youth participation, I will also be looking for practical examples. For this blog, I am interviewing Anne Schipper. Anne is 29 years old and has been involved in the energy transition at various organizations for over 7 years. She currently works for the municipality of Utrecht, where she is a senior project manager dedicated to large-scale renewable energy generation projects.
I am hugely involved in the energy transition, partly out of concern for how we can keep the earth habitable, but also primarily out of hope and the knowledge that we can do better in a way that is good for everyone.
Anne began our conversation on an activist but also hopeful note that both reappeared regularly throughout the discussion.
I am speaking with Anne primarily about her time at JongRES, an organization that, with 80 volunteers, works to ensure the voice of the future is heard in the Regional Energy Strategies (RES).
Why is youth participation important to you in the RES?
The RES is about the energy system of the future. We, as the younger generation, will soon be completely dependent on the energy system that is being built now. The importance of young people is therefore great, and that's why young people should be able to have a say in the decisions.
Furthermore, young people are generally better at coming up with ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas. Young people are not yet stuck in certain ideas, structures, or interests. This is precisely what we need for the energy transition to succeed. It is a transition, a shift to a new system that nobody knows exactly what it will look like. This requires new ideas, new insights, and a fresh perspective.
How did JongRES come about?
In 2019, the Climate Agreement was drawn up, of which the RES was a part. De Jonge Klimaatbeweging (The Young Climate Movement) and the Klimaat en Energie Koepel (Climate and Energy Federation), also two youth organizations, negotiated the Climate Agreement. During those negotiations, they stated: ‘we don't just want to be involved in the creation of the agreement, but also in its implementation.’ JongRES emerged from this, ensuring that young people also have a seat at the table at the regional level throughout the entire process.
Once it was agreed that a youth representation would participate in the RES, how was the organization then set up?
The RES was already in development. We established an organization that aligned with the Dutch RES organization. We had a youth representative in each RES and a national board and coordinators around them.
Looking back at that period now, I really wonder how we managed to get it all done.
We were at the table as a full stakeholder in this process. They realized at that moment that it was necessary to involve young people, but no one really knew how. In general, it's the older generations who set up and organize these kinds of processes. With JongRES, we stepped into that gap.
However, the extent to which it was truly embraced did vary by region. For example, in North Holland, a youth festival was organized to involve more young people and to let them think along about the RES. In other regions, it was more difficult, with less commitment and less flexibility from the other stakeholders.
So you were seen as a full stakeholder at the table, was this because there was a real understanding of the ‘why’ of youth participation?
I named two reasons why youth participation is important. The first reason: It's about our future and therefore we have a great interest, which most people have grasped. For the second reason: Young people bring new out-of-the-box ideas, that's not the case yet. There isn't much room for that yet. Especially in renewable energy, topics are very sensitive, interests are very large, and everyone finds it very exciting.
What also needs to be considered is that while people understand the importance of young people, concrete steps are often not taken in the balancing of interests or decision-making to translate this understanding into action. For example, a criterion could be included in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) stating that a plan must also be future-proof.
The impact on the current situation often weighs more heavily in considerations than the impact on the future.
This is a good example of how the interests of young people could be more structurally incorporated into balancing interests. What obstacles have you encountered?
The RES regions do not have authority; that lies with municipalities and provinces. Sometimes, as many as 16 municipalities sit at an RES table. While there is a youth representative at the RES table, it's difficult to find young people in all those municipalities to voice the youth perspective at municipal meetings. Furthermore, the Dutch democratic process is quite inaccessible. It's hard to navigate procedures and council meetings, which makes it unattractive for young people to participate in decision-making processes.
One possibility could be to routinely include in official advice to the council or board how young people in the respective municipality think about the matter. This ensures that youth participation must be organized.
Another obstacle we face is that we are the only stakeholders at the RES dialogues participating as volunteers. For the other stakeholders, it's part of their job. Many of us have the advantage that our employers facilitate our participation, as many of the RES meetings take place during working hours. Employer support is truly indispensable in this regard. However, there are also many young people for whom this is not the case, or where it is simply not possible. This limits the diversity and inclusion of the group of young people who get the chance to participate in such matters.
Many organizations want to involve young people, but you often hear that they don't succeed in reaching them. How did you manage to do that?
It helps a lot if you let young people organize activities themselves. That is by definition better. Within the RES, you see that it also very much depends on the region what the best way is to reach young people. We have organized pizza nights in a cabin, but also festivals and excursions. It also helps if there are activities where young people meet peers. This creates a different atmosphere. Money to organize something fun and accessible is indispensable for this.
What other successes has jongRES achieved?
The youth festivals were a great success. By organizing debates around the municipal council elections, we also had a seat at the table during the coalition negotiations. In addition, youth participation has been included in many regions‘ RES 1.0, allowing young people to ’enforce" their involvement.
How can we deal with seemingly ever more complex issues and the growing desire for citizen participation?
If we want to approach participation processes in a fair and inclusive way, they will really have to be designed in a radically different way. I don't know exactly how myself, but this way we are not facilitating inclusive participation, but participation for those who have the time, knowledge, and resources to participate.
Participation is not the holy grail.
And ultimately, participation is not the holy grail either. The participation processes must yield valuable input, map out considerations and interests, but ultimately, the administrators must dare to make courageous, long-term choices and not be tempted by short-term gains. That is something I do not currently see reflected in our country's political leaders.
