An Interview with Kirils Holstovs
In November 2021 we sat down with Kirils Holstovs, engineer and one of the initiators of the COP26 Joint Statement of International Youth Organisations, a statement put together by the WFEO and signed by youth organisations such as YOUNGO, Engineers Without Borders, Global Climate Youth Network and others.
COP26andbeyond were also signatories of the statement, and we are proud to have lent our legal expertise to help Kirils and his team draft the preamble to the text. While they did all the hard work drafting the Joint Statement and getting the signatories on board, we are glad we played our part in shaping it into a legal form which we hope will have enhanced its impact.
In this conversation, we discussed Kirils’ work drafting the statement, how it was received at COP26, his views on the COP itself and his plans for the coming year.
If you are part of an organisation looking to draft a similar climate declaration in the coming months, perhaps in time for COP27, and would like help turning your text into a legal treaty form, we would be happy to help. Please contact us at info@wyesideconsulting.com
Ed Wilson - COP26andbeyond. Thank you for talking to us, to start with could you introduce yourself?
My name is Kirils Holstovs, I’m a bridge engineer working for AECOM, which is a major international engineering consultancy. I’m based in the UK in Newcastle upon Tyne.
I’m also very actively involved in the climate space, I’ve taken part in the Youth4Climate summit in Milan, which was part of the PreCOP26 series of events, I represented Latvia there, and I also tried to bring an engineering perspective, talking about infrastructure policies and raising awareness about those issues.
Kirils presents the Statement to Nigel Topping, UN High Level Climate Action Champion at COP26 in Glasgow
At that time I was a part of the Sustainable Recovery Group and a subgroup focusing on financial flows, and then I took part in COP26 where I had the role of a UN observer of the negotiations, and where I took part in a number of events as a speaker, which was very interesting as well.
So you were observing the COP and also speaking at the side events?
Yes. So we had one event with the Capacity Building Hub, and then we had a virtual event for the Resilience Hub, which was very interesting. And then I took part in the UK Built Environment Pavilion, which was about the skills the future young professionals will need to address the climate emergency.
Brilliant. Could you introduce the Joint Statement that you worked on for COP26?
Yes, so I was part of a team that was leading work on the COP26 Joint Statement of International Youth Organisations, and the idea behind that is to show a unified voice of key UN affiliated Youth organisations, and provide a list of priority overarching policy recommendations for COP26. Particularly focused on Climate Mitigation, Adaptation, Resilience & Inclusive Action, which includes advancing the Marrakesh Partnership and enhancing youth involvement in decision making.
And we (COP26andbeyond) were very pleased to be asked to be a signatory on that Statement and we fully endorse it. It is a really powerful statement, how did you put it together? What was the idea behind producing it and how did you get the main signatories on board?
There were a few ideas behind the statement that ended up making it very successful. Pretty much every influential organisation and youth organisations tried to produce some form of policy document for COP26, there were two formal statements from youth at COP26, the Youth4Climate one I contributed to in Milan and also the COY (Conference of Youth) one, which was only published a couple of days before the COP.
The issue with those statements was that they were more than 40 pages long and they are very comprehensive, so it is unlikely that they would be read in full by ministers themselves. Likely, they would be read by their teams and a one or two-page summary would be provided to the senior policymakers. So the first idea was to bring all those organisations together and to deliver the key policy ideas that we wanted to see addressed at COP26 in a very quick read.
One of the success stories of our statement is that we were able to talk to ministers, lead negotiators and heads of delegations, and ask them to read the statement directly, and when we were interacting directly with parties on the ground at COP they were able to review the statement within one day and get back to us the next day to meet and discuss the statement. It was very efficient in that regard.
So how did you drum up support for it before COP26? And did you work with these organisations to draft it or draft it then ask them to sign?
I was one of the co-initiators of the statement, and I worked on it with the Global Young Engineers working group at the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO). Altogether we had a small group of 4 or 5 very active people and another 3 who would join us when available. One of my colleagues was very well connected with those organisations so in late July / early August 2021 we reached out to them and pitched the idea behind the statement to explore their support. One of the challenges was that those organisations were working on their own statements, and we were trying to bring them all together, which was not an easy task. So we met with the organisations, pitched the idea and found what their priorities were. And from there we drafted the key policy areas.
Did those organisations release their own statements as well or did they fall under your umbrella?
Most of them did write their own, but their statements were longer. Although some of our partners were UN affiliated organisations, who obviously have a seat at the table at all times so I’m sure their recommendations will reach policymakers at some point. But within the timeframes that we were operating I think our model was very efficient.
One of the areas that stood out to me was the focus on engineering, science and innovation. Could you talk a bit about why you see that as being so key a part of the statement?
One of the key things I noticed talking to negotiators and ministers at COP26 was how keen they were on the idea that those policies were supported by engineers. One of our key endorsers was the WFEO which represents 30 million engineers in over 100 countries. When I mentioned that fact to people I met at COP, and that policies in our statement were co-led by engineers, then it would straight away get attention from the ministers. I think policymakers are very keen to listen to those recommendations, because ultimately it will be engineers and people who are involved in science and technology who will be implementing those and producing solutions in the real world.
It is an interesting focus to pick on, because politicians can see the statement is endorsed by the people they want behind the transitions we need. What was the reaction you got from negotiators and people at COP26?
One of the key pieces of feedback was that the statement was a useful soft influence tool, but it was our first experience of being involved in a COP so it was our first experience seeing how governments would consider similar declarations. We were told that our policies were quite ambitious but still realistic. We had 12 policies in different areas, so the chances were that one of the policies crossed some sort of red line for the party so because of that they couldn’t endorse the declaration as a whole.
Countries were reluctant to sign anything they didn’t have to, and if they were to endorse several policies but not all there was a risk of being called out by the media and other stakeholder groups on why they chose specific policies and not others. In general, I think that our interactions with policymakers were very constructive and generally helped them understand our perspectives and what we think they should be focusing on.
We also hugely benefitted from the support of the High-level champions (Nigel Topping & Gonzalo Munoz). Due to the nature of the champions initiative they couldn’t formally endorse it, seeing as they work with business and our declaration was aimed at governments. But they were very happy to help us with communications, and after our interactions with them we would like to build on that relationship and engage with the business community as well to use the voice of young professionals to enhance ambition and align the financial flows with net zero.
At COP26 I got to speak to Nigel Topping and present him with the declaration.
Kirils with Nigel Topping at COP26
Another piece of feedback that we got at COP was that its quite remarkable how much we were able to achieve in such a short amount of time, because most declarations take months and months to garner support and get the necessary professional inputs, whereas we were able to achieve a highly impactful initiative with a couple of months work of a small dedicated team of young professionals.
Which of the 12 points were the key sticking points for some people?
One of them was definitely the fossil fuel industry, which was one of the sticking points at the COP itself
The statement on phasing out fossil fuels?
We asked countries to agree a roadmap to stop new fossil fuel exploration projects and to phase out subsidies.
You premeditated the key discussions at COP itself there!
Yes when we chose policies we looked at what would be discussed at COP26.
Another one you included was transparency, which was one of the better outcomes from the COP itself.
Yes and one of our recommendations got fully adopted, maybe not specifically due to us! But the methane reductions, reducing methane by 30% by 2030 got signed by 100 countries.
One of the earlier wins of the COP! So you were getting feedback while you were at COP itself, people would take the declarations away, read it and say this we can agree with this we can’t?
Some countries wouldn’t name what they wouldn’t agree on but based on their position we knew. I would enquire about specific policies that they would struggle to endorse, so Australia and coal for example, so they would talk about the political context, why they feel they can’t progress quicker.
So you were right at the heart of it at COP. What are the next steps from this declaration and from COP, how are you going to move forward now?
The statement was one of the first good steps with starting collaboration between youth and engineering organisations, so we will try to work closely in the future and build on meaningful cooperation. We have quite a good number of contacts now including lead negotiators and people who will be in charge of negotiations at COP27, so we will start work on COP27 and start to frame specific ambitious policies. One of the good partnerships that we hope to bring forward is with France, who have the presidency of the EU next year, so we have agreed to work with them on specific and meaningful youth engagement on policy making.
Do you think you will adjust how you go about it for the next cop? Will you write a similar statement or multiple smaller pledges?
There will be a couple of things we will adjust. We only had the opportunity to start writing the statement in late July, so in order to write recommendations, pass them to legal teams, etc. took several months, so we were only able to finish by the end of October, less than a week before COP. Thankfully our statement was quite short so it was easy to get to policymakers in time. So in the next year we are going to try to submit the statement at least one month in advance.
Secondly, regarding the difficulty of countries signing up to the whole declaration we may have one comprehensive declaration, and we will also focus on specific individual policies as well.
Thirdly, we will start building the capacity of our team of professionals as well, for most of the people it was their first COP, so in the beginning it was a very overwhelming experience. The COP experience is not very transparent, and it is hard to get youth involvement at the right capacity, so we will continue to cooperate with organisers and youth to meet in the middle to ensure as meaningful youth participation as possible.
I don’t want to ask too many questions about COP27 since COP26 has just finished and you all probably need a bit of a break but it sounds like you already have some really interesting ideas. Where can people find the statement itself?
It has been posted by our partner organizations and can be found at the WFEO website here.
Great, thank you. And finally, what were your thoughts on the COP itself?
In general we were highly inspired by COP, there were so many influential people coming together talking about some of the most difficult issues in the world. And getting the global community together and the most influential representatives of the business community was impressive. So we have been given a huge energy boost to continue working in that direction. And because it was our first COP we have learnt we need to get ready for the next one early.
The outcomes of COP weren’t as ambitious as they needed to be, but I think they were just ambitious enough to have enough to work with for COP27, but in general it was great to see the overall consensus from the global community being we need to tackle the issue urgently, the sticking point is how do we do it. For instance, how do we make the transition of the global economy in a just way, so the developing countries who haven’t been able to benefit from the fossil fuel industry, transition fairly, and how do we support the countries that will be most affected by climate change as well.
Its shown where the sticking points are, we just need a hell of a lot of work to get through them, Thank you very much for taking the time to have a chat with us.