Eric Njuguna

Young climate activists held talks with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on Tuesday. Vanessa Nakate, Eric Njuguna and Elizabeth Wathuti were among the campaigners to meet the UN chief on the sidelines of the conference. Njuguna, 19, who coordinates the Fridays for Future movement in Kenya, said young people had a "meaningful" input to bring to efforts to tackle climate change and he felt the meeting was valuable. "There is clearly no time so he (Guterres) said and we have his word on that, that he is going to continue pushing to make sure that world leaders make their own commitments, national delegations make their own commitments because if they don't then it's going to be disastrous for countries in the global south who have no funding to implement climate adaptation, who are being already affected by the climate crisis, yeah." Wathuti, 26, also from Kenya, who had the opportunity to address the conference on Monday, said young people would continue to push the urgency of the crisis while leaders "continue to fail us". She urged people to recognize the "injustices" of the climate emergency and act to support those who were most vulnerable to its impact.