The Moral Power of Youth Climate Activists - Transforming International Climate Politics?

Youth Climate Activists are an important norm entrepreneur as humanity is increasingly awakening to the realities of accelerating climate change. They push for seeing climate change not merely through cost-benefit analysis frames but through frames of multiple climate justices and our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable, including our own children, against the unfolding climate crisis. But how successful have these activists been in shifting perspectives in the context of international climate politics, where often the fundamental parameters are set for national climate politics? Here we computationally investigate to what extent the normative framework advanced by this movement is increasingly penetrating the international public climate debate, changing arguments, priorities, and frames used at international climate policy negotiations hosted by UNFCCC and we investigate the key actors pushing for normative change. We find that indeed the normative framework advanced by the movement has successfully penetrated the discourse around UNFCCC and that youth climate activists were able gain support from norm champions furthering their cause and further contributing to the diffusion of their normative framework. We also find that their normative framework is slowly starting to spread among government actors.