By Our Special Correspondent
As Nigeria moves from climate commitments to implementation under its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0), an emerging question is becoming increasingly important: How do national climate policies translate into the realities, priorities and voices of young people at state and community level?
In the South-East, this question is taking a practical form through the work of Amb. Queen Amazu, South-East Regional Coordinator of the Nigerian Youth Climate Negotiators Network (NYCNN), and her team.
Amazu’s work has developed across the national, regional and state climate-governance spaces, with a focus on ensuring that young people are not only beneficiaries of climate policies but are able to understand, contribute to and participate in their implementation.
Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 was formally submitted to the UNFCCC in September 2025, establishing the country’s updated climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. At the same time, the NDC Partnership has noted that young people remain underrepresented in formal climate decision-making and that meaningful youth engagement is necessary for successful implementation.
The missing link: from national policy to local realities
Research provides evidence of a knowledge and participation gap.
A Nigerian study involving young people in South-Eastern Nigeria found that while awareness of climate change was high among its respondents, knowledge of its causes and impacts was comparatively weaker.
A broader Nigerian study on sustainability and climate-policy participation similarly found that awareness of climate-policy implementation at the local level was limited, potentially restricting meaningful stakeholder participation.
Importantly, this does not mean that there is no climate research at state level. A recent nationwide assessment describes itself as the first comprehensive assessment of climate awareness, policy development and action across all 36 Nigerian states, but youth-specific, state-level evidence remains much less developed.
It is within this gap that Amazu’s regional work is positioned.
Bringing the South-East voice into the NDC 3.0 conversation
In 2026, Amazu participated in national climate processes in Abuja, including the National Young People’s Convening on NDC 3.0 and Climate Action, where young people from across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones engaged around priority areas including energy transition, transport, agriculture, nature-based solutions, resilient livelihoods and climate governance.
She also participated in the Nigeria Youth Climate Summit 2026, held in Abuja from June 2–3 and convened by the National Council on Climate Change in collaboration with UNICEF. The summit focused specifically on youth leadership and the implementation of Nigeria’s NDC 3.0.
For Amazu, however, participation at the national level is only one part of the work.
The bigger question is what happens after Abuja.
How do national climate conversations reach students in Abia?
How does a young entrepreneur understand the green economy?
How does a farmer connect climate policy with agriculture and livelihoods?
How does a young person understand where their voice fits into state climate planning?
These questions have increasingly shaped her approach to climate advocacy.
From regional leadership to state-level action
As South-East Regional Coordinator of NYCNN, Amazu works across Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo, creating platforms for young people to engage with climate governance and policy.
The South-East NDC Climate Summit 1.0, scheduled for 28–29 October 2026 at Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic, Abia State, represents a significant extension of that regional work.
The summit carries the theme:
“From Awareness to Action: Empowering South-East Youth for Climate Governance, Green Economy and a Resilient Future.”
The objective is not simply to hold another climate conference. It is to create a structured space where young people can examine the region’s climate priorities, discuss sector-specific challenges and develop youth perspectives that can feed into wider policy conversations.
The planned summit will bring together young people, government institutions, development partners, civil society, academia and the private sector, with discussions spanning climate governance, green economy, sustainable development and youth participation.
Working with government, not working around government
A central element of Amazu’s approach has been engagement with government institutions.
In Abia State, the Department of Climate Change was established in 2023 under the Ministry of Environment to coordinate the state’s climate action agenda, including mitigation, adaptation, vulnerability assessment, greenhouse-gas inventory and climate education and awareness.
The state’s climate roadmap also includes clean cooking, green infrastructure, climate financing and community-driven resilience initiatives.
Amazu and NYCNN have engaged with the Abia State Government around these emerging priorities, including the Abia State Clean Cooking Plan, where youth perspectives were brought into conversations around energy access, public health, livelihoods, environmental protection and climate mitigation. The state’s Clean Cooking Plan was launched in January 2026.
This creates a practical model: national policy informs state action; state realities inform youth engagement; and youth perspectives can then feed back into national climate conversations.
Capturing the voices behind the statistics
For Amazu, one of the most important outcomes is ensuring that young people across Abia and the wider South-East are not spoken for without being heard.
The proposed approach is to take climate education and policy conversations beyond government offices and conference rooms and into schools, tertiary institutions, communities, youth organisations and professional spaces.
The intention is to understand what young people actually know about climate change, what sectors affect their livelihoods, what opportunities they see in the green economy and what prevents them from participating in climate decision-making.
Such an approach could help generate more locally grounded evidence while strengthening the connection between youth priorities and climate policy.
It also reflects a broader principle recognised by international climate institutions: youth participation in NDC processes should extend beyond attendance to meaningful involvement in development, planning and implementation.
A regional platform with a national purpose
The South-East NDC Climate Summit therefore represents more than a two-day event.
It is part of an emerging effort to build a South-East youth climate governance pipeline from awareness, to education, to consultation, to policy engagement and eventually implementation.
For Abia, it also provides an opportunity to connect the state’s growing climate governance architecture with young people who will live with the long-term consequences of today’s policy choices.
For the South-East, it creates a platform through which the region’s priorities can be articulated collectively.
And for Amazu, the work represents the progression of a journey that has moved from participating in national climate conversations to creating structures through which those conversations can be taken back home and translated into local action.
The message behind her work is straightforward: NDC 3.0 cannot remain a national document understood only by policymakers. Its implementation must be understood, discussed and experienced at state and community level.
That is the space the South-East NDC Climate Summit seeks to occupy bringing the conversation from Abuja to Abia, from policy to people, and from awareness to action.
