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Youth from isolated nations are leading the charge against climate change, as seen in Botswana where Tinaye Hazel Mabara and her team created a flood database overnight.
Their efforts were celebrated at the UN conference, emphasizing the shift from passive victims to active solution builders, with young leaders advocating for policy changes and innovative climate strategies.
The rains came without warning.
Tinaye Hazel Mabara was at home in Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, when the skies opened up with a fury few had seen before. Within hours, water surged through dusty alleys, transforming familiar roads into rivers. What should have been an ordinary day, had become a disaster. Neighbours clambered onto rooftops. Children screamed as currents pulled away sandals and schoolbooks.
“It was chaos,” Mabara recalled, her voice steady. “But also a moment of awakening. We realised then that no one was coming to save us. We had to save ourselves.”
That night, Mabara, a climate strategist with the Green Africa Youth Organization and co-founder of the Bokamoso Resilience Initiative, called together her friends. Most of them were students and young professionals. None had any training in disaster response. But by morning, they had built Botswana’s first national youth-led flood database—a crowdsourced map of safe routes, flooded areas, and emergency contacts. It was verified by authorities and adopted within days as a trusted information hub.
“It wasn’t perfect,” Mabara said. “But it saved lives.”
This week, Mabara’s story echoed across the marble corridors of the Awaza Congress Centre in Turkmenistan, where hundreds of delegates gathered for the Third United Nations Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs). But it wasn’t the diplomats who drew the biggest applause. It was the young people.
At a high-level press briefing titled Next Generation Resilience, Mabara sat beside Natalia Alonso Cano, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction or UNDRR’s regional chief for Europe and Central Asia, and Rashid Meredov, Turkmenistan’s deputy prime minister. While policy experts outlined the economic toll of climate disasters on landlocked nations—1.44 per cent of Gross Domestic Product lost annually, five times the global average—Mabara offered something rarer: a human voice.
“We are not just victims of climate change,” she told the room. “We are building the solutions.”
Of the world’s 32 landlocked developing countries, most are also among the poorest and least equipped to deal with climate shocks. With no access to the sea, these nations depend on costly transit routes, often through politically volatile neighbours. But the geographical isolation doesn’t shield them from climate change—it worsens it.
Floods in Botswana. Drought in Burkina Faso. Landslides in Nepal. Glacial melt in Mongolia. The disasters come in different forms but carry the same message: the climate crisis does not discriminate, but it punishes the vulnerable more.
“We lose more than infrastructure,” said Natalia Alonso Cano. “We lose futures.”
Yet in Awaza, there was a sense that something is shifting. In hall after hall, youth leaders from the heartlands stood up to share stories not just of suffering, but of ingenuity.
In Malawi, young people recently marched to the capital following devastating floods, demanding new climate legislation. Their protest led to the creation of Malawi’s first Climate Change Bill.
“Young people aren’t just advocating,” Mabara explained. “They’re shaping policy.”
That shift—from passive recipients to active agents—was on full display at the Youth Forum that preceded the main LLDC conference. Delegates from 32 countries adopted a bold Youth Declaration, calling for inclusion in decision-making, investment in youth-led innovation, and universal access to climate education.
Among the standout initiatives: in Nepal, a group of engineering students developed low-cost climate education kits now used in rural schools. In Zambia, youth-run cooperatives are training farmers on regenerative agriculture and rainwater harvesting. In Kyrgyzstan, a startup is using AI to predict flash floods in mountain villages.
“We are not waiting for perfect conditions,” said Chisomo Banda, 24, a Malawian hydrologist. “We’re starting with what we have.”
And what they have, more than money or infrastructure, is motivation.
“We are driven by necessity,” said Svain Davaasuren, a youth delegate from Mongolia. “If we don’t act, no one will.”
Still, challenges remain.
When a journalist asked Mabara how youth in LLDCs could engage with technical climate solutions when many lacked access to quality education, her answer was honest.
“We start by translating complexity into clarity,” she said. “At Bokamoso, we take scientific terms and turn them into short videos, infographics, even comic strips. Most of our youth are on social media—so that’s where we meet them.”
Mabara recounted how during the floods, they partnered with tech-savvy peers to aggregate citizen reports, vet them with government agencies, and publish real-time alerts through Instagram, WhatsApp, and SMS.
“We have the energy. What we need is capacity,” she said. “And trust.”
Natalia Alonso Cano echoed that sentiment.
“Disaster risk reduction is not just about infrastructure,” she said. “It’s about inclusion. Youth are not accessories to the conversation. They are leaders.”
UNDRR has developed a toolkit to help governments integrate youth into climate strategies. It includes guidelines on risk governance, community engagement, and resilient infrastructure. More importantly, it stresses a whole-of-society approach—where ministries, civil society, and youth work hand in hand.
“One dollar in prevention saves seven in recovery,” Cano reminded delegates. “The question is not whether we can afford to involve youth. It is whether we can afford not to.”
One of the most powerful exchanges came when a delegate asked Mabara about youth apathy in agriculture—the backbone of many African economies.
”It’s not apathy,” she replied. “It’s access.”
In Botswana, she explained, most young people lack land, capital, or even water rights. But that hasn’t stopped them. Across the country, youth are experimenting with hydroponics, vertical farms, and backyard gardens.
“We farm where we can,” she said. “We innovate not because it’s trendy, but because it’s urgent.”
Her answer struck a chord.
In Burkina Faso, youth-run agri-clinics are restoring degraded soil using indigenous techniques. In Laos, students are developing drought-resistant rice strains. In Kazakhstan, young tech entrepreneurs are building climate-smart irrigation apps.
The week in Awaza ended not with fanfare, but with a ceremony: the presentation of the Youth Declaration to the President of the UN General Assembly.
Its title: Building Bridges for the Future of Landlocked Developing Countries.
Its tone: urgent, inclusive, hopeful.
“Youth are not just the future,” said Rabab Fatima, UN Under-Secretary-General. “They are the now.”
Back in Botswana, Mabara’s flood map continues to evolve. Bokamoso is training volunteers in basic GIS mapping. They’re working with schools to develop localised climate curricula. And in the next flood—because there will be another—they hope to respond not with panic, but with preparedness.
“We can’t move mountains,” she said. “But we can move minds.”
And in the landlocked heartlands of the world, that may be the most powerful shift of all.
