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Hi, everybody. Welcome to this week's broadcast.

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And I'm delighted to welcome as my guest, Valeria Longo.

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Lozano Valeria. Welcome to the cast. Thank you.

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Thank you for having me here. It's my great pleasure. And for those of you who don't know Valeria,

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Valeria is just completing her Winfield Hofmann Trust sponsored graduate course at Worcester in

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Global Governance and Governance and Diplomacy at the Department of International Development.

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Thank you for filling me in on that. And before we get into what you've been doing and what you might be doing next there, you're from Mexico.

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Tell us about where you studied before you arrived in Oxford.

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That's a great question. So hello, everyone. My name is Valeria.

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I'm 22 and I actually began my work in social justice through the specific lens of gender equality.

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And I began when I was 16. So when I was back in Mexico, I went to a Catholic private school where I made amazing friendships.

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But also I feel like there was a lot of, like, status quo that I had to deal with.

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And it was an amazing experience growing up in Mexico.

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But of course, I feel like as someone that grew up with a lot of interactions on the Internet,

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I was always intrigued and interested in why there were certain conversations that were more difficult to have in my home country and in my hometown,

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and that really inspired me to look to have an education abroad.

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So I was really interested in international relations when I was really young, specifically sustainable development focussed on young women and girls.

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And I decided to go to the University of Texas at Austin.

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Right. All majoring in international relations and Latin American studies.

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I mean, I'm incredibly passionate about international relations,

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but I think that complementing this perspective with the realities in Latin America and the realities of historically marginalised groups,

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I think that really allowed me to widen my understanding of what's happening out there.

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And I finished my undergrad studies in three years, and it was just in 2022 and the pandemic was ending, you know,

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and because I had graduated one year early, I had this wide young people called Quarter Life crisis aerosols.

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My friends and I were asking ourselves, What's next for us? What should you doing?

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And after much thinking, I decided that it was really important to continue with my education now that I continue to have the opportunity.

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So I decided to apply for Oxford, and I found this amazing global governance, and I thought it was a perfect fit.

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But then and I think I have discussed this with you before. My first question was, Well, how am I going to go all the way to Oxford?

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Who is going to help me get there, financially speaking?

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And that's when I heard about the Ph.D. And there'll be some people listening who don't really know about it and feel.

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Hofmann trust. It transforms the lives of many people.

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And, you know, I'm a great supporter. Tell us very briefly about it.

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Well, I think what involvement trust is one of those I would like to go to almost like a jewel that you don't know except someone you discover.

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It's like, why is no one talking about that? Good way to describe it.

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And the first thing that ignited my curiosity about the trust is how important

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the social impact is and also how important the community aspect of it is.

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And I feel like that was a main thing that I was looking for because I knew that going to a master's degree in the UK would

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be a completely different experience because the international student body in Oxford is just much more international.

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Huge, isn't it? Exactly. So I just knew that I wanted to have a community that I could rely on and that once I stepped foot on at Oxford,

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I would have like people that I would know and that I could have a conversation with.

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I think what provided for me when I first arrived to Oxford was not only like an eye opening experience of

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knowing the type of impactful work that people are doing and that it's possible for other people to do,

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but also to understand how that social impact activities that people are really executing

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in the world have a academic aspect to it and what that means for a university like Oxford.

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So it was just an incredibly exciting experience to be looking forward to be part of when I was applying.

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And then when I actually got the scholarship,

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it was just something that I knew it was going to change my experience here because it's a small community.

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How many scholars are there every year? 28 and 30.

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Do I think it's a small cohort? You immediately become part of the Tea family as well as then.

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Being part of college life. And WHCA scholars are situated in a number of colleges right across the university.

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Yeah, I mean, I think I have had the opportunity to know other colleges precisely because of my W friends.

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Yeah, but also, I think being able to have that international community that you're really close with.

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Yeah, I think that has also really as an Irish person really helped me form my understandings of social impact in other places in the world,

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which I think it's something that,

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I mean we have access to online, but like actually getting to hear those stories from the people that experience them,

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I think that's something that really changes your life.

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So not only do you get a great address book and friendships and the Friendship Network all over the world,

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but you get the opportunity to test things in real time and to hear about real experiences.

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But let's move on to the global governance work that you've been doing because we've talked about this before.

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I'm from Wales. One of the really inspired pieces of legislation that applies in Wales but not elsewhere in the UK is the future generations.

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I know it's something that you as a young leader really care passionately about.

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Yes, I actually I think that was also one of the reasons why I was kind of like so

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insistent when myself in coming to Oxford because I actually wrote my capstone,

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which is like a small dissertation when I was an undergrad about Wales and commissioner for future generations.

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I think when I look back because now I have already submitted my dissertation and I'm just like waiting, waiting to hear back.

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When I think back of the work that I did when I was an undergrad and now the work that I have done in Oxford,

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it feels really fulfilling to be able to relate those two things because when I was an undergrad I was doing this research on why are countries and,

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and governments like that of Wales have been doing for future generations.

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And now I'm looking beyond the country level aspect and asking these bigger questions when it comes to the global governance level,

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which of course my degree here in Oxford has really for me to think about it in different ways.

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So pausing there because there's so much we we can talk about, can you give us an example of the kind of initiatives that you've been thinking about?

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So when I worked with the information, we created this report called Our Future Agenda, and it had several pillars to it.

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We talked about education, we talked about environment, we talk about the future of work.

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We also talked about the future of multilateralism.

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And I remember, of course, my generation and just future generations are incredibly interested in the climate crisis.

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And when we were working on this document, we were asking ourselves,

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how can we redefine or rethink the social contract for young generations now that COVID is happening?

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Right. And something that came up when we were writing this report was realising that although all these governments

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were not only promising that they were going to do better when it came to climate change and renewables,

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but also, you know, making these big promises and and saying that we're going to do better whenever COVID happened, of course,

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the economy had a huge breakdown and instead of complying with those promises,

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they started reinvesting on fossil fuels and all these different things.

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And it was so interesting doing research for this report, because the more that we research,

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the more more that we realise that it really didn't make a lot of sense.

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It was kind of like a Band-Aid to the bigger problem, because if we look at research,

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we see that young people are less interested in less likely on engaging in those industries.

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So what we did with this report is that we proposed this idea of a Green New Deal,

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which was inspired on some policy work that was happening in the US.

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And basically our entire claim is it research shows that the next generation of workers are less likely to want to engage with those industries.

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Then why are we trying to revamp the economy through those industries that us young workers are less likely to be involved with?

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And that goes to really important points, doesn't it?

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About short termism? Yes. Yes, because this is why anticipating the needs of future generations is so fundamentally challenging because politics all

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over the world and the way that the political system and political leadership works is that it's all about short term.

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Yes. Decision making. I mean, how do we learn how to be short termist?

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What I after thinking for many, many months and what I should be writing my dissertation on,

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I decided to look at the philosophical aspect of your two generations because it was interesting to me

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how when I talk to decision makers or just people that work in the UN or in different governments,

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they were all interested in working future generations. But it appeared to me that it wasn't clear what was the end.

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Goal. And when I say the end goal is if we were to try to imagine the future that we want for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren,

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everyone had a different understanding and vision for it.

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So what I tried to do for my dissertation was put into context for different frameworks for philosophy.

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I looked at utilitarianism, rawlsian justice, intergenerational equity,

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environmental justice, and I was just trying to learn and unlearn what this meant.

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I was like, Are we trying to maximise the amount of people that we're saving in the future or

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are we trying to provide an environment that is liveable for future generations?

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So where did you end up? Because those are all in a completely foreseeable outcomes, but we need to make some tough choices that.

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I think the biggest takeaway was realising that this question that I had put forward,

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which is what does the future that we want looks like or what should it look like according to us as present generations,

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is not even a question that is being asked right now in the multilateral system.

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I think the main priority, if we look at because I focussed on the U.N. documents when I was writing my

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dissertation and we look at the work of the U.N. up until the last two or three years,

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it has been focussed on making sure that humanity continues to live on.

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It has a lot of focus on our quality of life in the future.

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It has not focussed on the environment that we need to have a liveable life.

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It has simply focussed on us as a human race and making sure that we continue to exist.

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And I deeply believe from the work that I have done and from talking to other experts, that we are at a point,

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given the climate crisis, where we need to rethink whether that is our ultimate goal,

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just to make sure that we live on or whether we should be thinking about what

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makes life worth living and why should that look like for the future of humanity.

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And as a future leader, what's your view?

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I think I'm kind of biased because I have said before that I started working as an activist when I was 16.

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So definitely I think I side more to the grassroots approach to this.

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And I think there is so much value in questioning the work we're doing from the environmental justice perspective, because at the end of the day,

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I truly believe personally that without a liveable and durable environment, then there is a lot to question about whether our life is worth living.

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And I think that after writing my dissertation,

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I kept realising that we are all so proud of thinking of people centred approaches, which makes sense, right?

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Because of after the very difficult history we have had in recent years, it makes sense that we want to put people in the centre,

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but I think that we are a point where we need to question ourselves whether we can continue to afford putting people at the centre.

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So I think that reassessing things from an environmental justice perspective should be highly considered by decision makers.

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Why don't policymakers and politicians listen more to young leaders and future generations?

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Why do you think that is? I think there are two levels to it. The first one is, of course, tokenism, which is that in many cultures,

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the idea that older people or people with more experience are wiser and hence they have the last decision.

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That is something that is just part of certain cultures. In others it just comes down to for certain politicians or decision makers,

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it looks good to have us in the picture as young decision makers or young leaders.

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But like when it really comes down to negotiation, we kind of like get put on the side.

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And I think the second aspect to it is how structurally young people are disadvantaged.

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And I know we want to talk about this in our conversation, but in the work that I have done for the Y20,

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because I work as a white 20 delegate for Mexico, I think I have had really interesting conversations about structural change,

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specifically when it comes, for example, to reducing the age of voters,

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because in many countries it ranges from being 21 years old or 18 years old and 18 is normally like the common starting age for voting.

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But if we look at research from the OECD, most senior members would agree that the ideal voting age should be 16.

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It pushes us to start asking questions. And why is that not the rule already?

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And I also think and I think this has been one of the other big takeaways from engaging in the Y20, which is the Y20 is happening in India this year.

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And in India they have this concept of self evolution, which I had never heard about,

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which I think is so interesting from the intergenerational justice perspective.

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And basically what they say is there's this concept that self evolution is this idea that older people in,

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in decision making spaces need to like actively.

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Start giving the decision, making opportunities to younger people.

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And apparently from the work that I have been doing, this has been like a very kind of like big conversation that has been happening in South Asia.

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And I think it's so interesting because I have had conversations with other people that tell me, well, 16 is too young.

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And I'm like, Well, yeah, but if you look at it, there is no limits on when you stop voting.

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And we can also move the focus on the other side, which is not really what I do.

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I'm not really asking questions on when should people voting.

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But I think we need to also understand that young people are engaging more and more in politics.

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Yes, because voting age isn't the only consideration, but it's a really important and powerful one.

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So you mentioned zero in 120 in a couple of times.

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And so it's one of the reasons that I was determined to invite you along to the podcast.

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But tell us what it is and what you were doing on behalf of Mexico.

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So the Y20, which is a youth drug from the G20,

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it's basically the side of the organisation that works precisely on understanding

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what are the interests of young people in the G20 member countries and my country,

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Mexico, as part of the G20. And there was an open call this year to participate as a delegate.

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And I went through the national call, which was conducted by the Office of Foreign Relations and other entities in the Mexican government,

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and I am very happy to share that I was selected. Yeah, which I'm very thankful for it.

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And I work as a delegate for the track of shared future governance and democracy.

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And the work that I do in the Y20 is focussed on, as I said before,

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asking these very difficult questions on what governance and democracy mean for our young people.

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So,

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so give us a flavour of the kind of things that you were considering as you went off to India and I know had a really interesting and exciting time.

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But tell us because there'll be a lot of people listening in who won't necessarily know too much about the detail of Y20.

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How did it work and what were you considering?

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So we had a pre-summit which happened in March, and so we're meeting in August in VR in India, where we're having our final summit.

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And what we hope to achieve from that summit is to write a communique.

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And this communique has policy recommendations that are then shared with the Sherpas and the decision makers at the G20 level.

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Basically, the entire idea is that we put forward, as young people from the G20 member states, all of our priorities.

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And this year there were certain tracks that were defined as priority tracks for young people.

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One of them is the one where I'm participating Shared Future. There's another one focus on health.

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There's another one focus on peace. There's another one focus on the future of work.

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And last but not least, obviously we have climate change. And when I was in, we went to the union territory of Ladakh in India.

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And one of the things that I realised is how different our understanding of both governance and democracy,

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which is to try to work on, is throughout the world view of the Member states.

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In the G20, we had delegates in our track who were sharing how democracy works differently in their countries and, you know,

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asking why would we support the certain way of doing democracy when that's not really how it works in the countries.

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In my track, we also work on looking at community governance and what that means, which is it's not only grassroots approach to youth governance,

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but also thinking of youth advisory councils and indigenous understandings of governance, which also.

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So isn't it? Yes, it's really difficult truly to have these negotiations with what I would say are incredible young leaders around the world,

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not because they are difficult people to deal with, but because we have so little space in this communique to express what we want.

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And also we're also so conscious that the G20 summit has so many priorities and so many things going on

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that we also need to be very precise and specific on what our main message is for the decision makers.

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So you've still got to finalise the messages.

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Yes, we're still working on. Yeah, yeah. But I guess two questions.

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One, do you feel as a group of participants in 120 that you were heard?

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That's a great question. I think most of us acknowledge that the spaces we have is already a privileged

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space in the sense where we already are one step closer to the decision makers.

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Yeah. However, as I mentioned before, we are very self aware of both tokenism and the structural disadvantages that exist,

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and I think there has been a lot of work done on reducing tokenism, which I think it's a.

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But the main work that I,

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valerius and individual have been putting forward as a Y 20 delegate has been on the idea of having youth representative for the future,

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which would be a Y20 delegation that is part of the G20.

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Okay. So basically what I'm putting forward is idea that structurally we exist as this kind of like parallel entity that is coexisting with the G20,

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but not really being either part of the negotiations or even like listening to what the negotiations are saying about our input.

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And that really puts us behind in our work because on the next year when different delegates come into the work,

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we have no feedback on what we did the previous year.

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We have no idea what were the priorities or tables that the decision makers were keen of helping us conduct.

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And we also really don't understand how impactful our communicate is and how it could be even more impactful.

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So the bigger question and the bigger challenge ahead for us now that we continue our work in the Y20 this year,

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is how can we ensure that this idea is not lost in words as evidently it has happened before?

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Because what we are putting forward is not only obviously working and speaking on behalf of young

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generations that are looking for better work opportunities and better climate crisis action,

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but also having this long,

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long term perspective of what should Sherpas and decision makers in the G20 be prioritising for future generations in the next couple of decades?

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That's great. And how optimistic do you feel? I think there's so many people that have great not only will to make it happen, but also interest.

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And I think a lot of it comes from people being genuinely interested in making things good and making really valuable change in multilateralism.

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I think there is a strong possibility of it happening because as I said before, I think we are now looking at a different approach,

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an approach that looks beyond just putting the best looking or best sounding words on the communique,

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but actually an approach that taps into the existing interest in the short term that can make it realistic for us to start working in the long term.

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Global governance is incredibly important.

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Climate change and the climate crisis is really going to drive all sorts of very profound climate and global challenges, whether it's migration,

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whether it's equity, you know, how optimistic do do you feel not just about the G20, but, you know, us as a global community?

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I think the work that is being conducted right now is, in my opinion,

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historical in the sense that we have never before seen the UN and international institutions talk so vividly and so often about future generations.

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However, in my opinion, this is given to how impactful and realistic the climate crisis is,

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and I think we should not be waiting for it to get worse in order to be more, you know, proactive about this, about this topic.

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I think I'm optimistic about the future in the sense where I think that both young people and

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just people who simply care about the environment and about having a better future for everyone,

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I think they're taking it with a lot of seriousness. However, I think that we need to ask our decision makers specifically national and

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international decision making spaces to put it at the priority of their agenda.

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And I think that's what we are lacking right now.

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The U.N. is set to have a summit of the future next year and also to write a declaration for future generations,

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which is set to be a landmark achievement in multilateralism, which is great.

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But I think that it should not. Too often we have seen that multilateralism is reactive, and right now we cannot afford that reactivity.

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We need to be really proactive and to implement a lot of strategic foresight to what's about to happen in the future.

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So sum it up optimistic as long as we're protected.

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Yeah, great. And it sounds like an incredible experience.

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Why 20 and being on the w t course here at Oxford.

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What's next. I am I am trying as someone who is just basically out of the graduate level studies

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and someone who is really passionate about the social justice work that I do.

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I'm trying to figure out how I can stay true to the work that I have already conducted and stay impactful,

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because I think we need to protect young leaders and young people who have already been conducting such impactful

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work and make sure that we create pathways for pipelines for them to continue doing that impactful work.

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Because one of the aspects that we have talked about a lot when it comes to the future of work is how we don't perceive young leaders as experts.

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We live in a society that values we leave at the end of the day.

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And what I would say is an ageing society and a society that values looking at

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your résumé and knowing how many years of experience you have been doing A,

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B or C, and well, I think that that is true to that.

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And we need to make sure that our decision makers and our experts have some sort of tangible experience in the field work.

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I think more and more we are understanding that age is not necessarily the main

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thing that we should be looking at when it comes to giving space for for expertise.

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So basically, I'm really trying really hard to find opportunities that allow me to continue my work as an

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intergenerational justice expert and also continue to expand on other interests of mine,

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such as gender equality, sustainable development and environmental governance.

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Hopefully this will lead to me working in some sort of NGO,

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international institution or development bank that allows me to have a better

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understanding of how we can connect grassroots initiatives with decision makers.

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It sounds like a great ambition. Thank you. Let's see.

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I wish you well, as we all do in Worcester.

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But if you had one wish to change, you know the way that governance works.

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But if I had the power to grant your wish, what would you wish for?

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That's a great question. I think that too often, from my experience,

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I have seen decision makers take decisions based on and we have talked about it so much

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in this focus on immediate needs or immediate crises which are so important to handle.

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And I acknowledge that.

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But I think when we're responding to this immediate needs or this immediate crises, we do so without really assessing the long term impact.

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And I think that if I could change anything in global governance and multilateralism would be kind of

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this natural bias that we have in just like looking at things immediately at this short term way.

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But I think that the future of humanity as a whole is looking beyond immediacy and looking more into what the future holds for us.

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And speaking on behalf of past generations, not that we're over yet, but generations who currently leaders we know.

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And the Climate Emergency is a great example of that. We don't have all the answers.

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So that was why I was keen to talk to you. Good luck.

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Thank you for participating in the broadcast.

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But Valeria, really good luck and I really support your ambition for future generations to be actively involved.

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My view is that without that support,

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we're not going to tackle the very issues that you're raising that really demands different ways of thinking, different perspectives.

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And last but not least, the end of short termism.

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So, yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the invitation.