Panama's top COP26 negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez pumps himself up each morning with 'reggaeton' music as the 29-year-old prepares to fight for the future of his country and his generation. "We're the people who are going to make noise," Monterrey Gomez told Reuters at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow. The 11-member Panamanian negotiating team which Monterrey Gomez leads is the youngest at COP26, with an average age of just 26 and more women than men. "We're young. Don't take us for granted. You want to keep us on the right side. Sometimes we're nice, but sometimes we need to be not-so-nice," is how he summarizes his tactics. During his relatively short lifetime, Monterrey Gomez has seen pledges made by previous generations of negotiators and world leaders repeatedly failed to control climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions have doubled, while rich nations still have not made good on long-standing promises of finance for poor nations to adapt to the changes global warming brings. The Panamanian delegation is pushing for talks to result in a firm commitment by rich nations to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels. And he warned Britain's COP president Alok Sharma to take his team seriously on the first day of the summit. "The point of the Panama delegation ... is not only to make change, but it's also to be disruptive and represent the youth and women of the world," Monterrey Gomez said. He represents a youthful country and region, with the median age in central America just 28, compared with 38 in the United States and 42.5 in Europe.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-11-11/panamas-team-make-noise-at-cop26-for-youth-and-women
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-11-11/panamas-team-make-noise-at-cop26-for-youth-and-women
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