Two AUA Students Attend Hamburg Sustainability Conference

Nrane Markosyan’s Reflections

The Hamburg Sustainability Conference brought together ministers, UN officials, CEOs, and development bank leaders, and somewhere in that crowd, there were 16 young people from across the Global South who were not there as observers. The HSC Youth Ambassador Program selects young leaders from Emerging Markets and Developing Economies based not on credentials or language skills, but on the positive impact they have had in their communities. 

I learned this directly from two of them. Bryan Villafuerte Alarcón from Peru, co-founder of an AI-powered sustainable food platform called Green Cycle, spoke limited English but had been helping shape the conference agenda for months before it started. 

Robinson Olaka from Kenya, who works on expanding clean energy access through solar microgrids, said the same. Their presence was not symbolic; they were on the discussion panels, often asking the questions that cut deepest. 

During a session on peace-positive economic policy, a Youth Ambassador from the floor raised credit ratings, borrowing costs for developing countries, and debt-for-climate swap mechanisms as structural levers that had not been addressed by the ministers and development bank officials on stage. 

The most rigorous intervention in that room came from the youngest person present. The session I found most engaging was Accelerator III, co-designed with youth representatives, where we had the opportunity to engage in discussion rather than simply listen. My group debated what the most urgent problem facing young people globally is. I argued for education quality, while someone else advocated for financial access, and we ended up agreeing that the two are inseparable.

What struck me most across the two days was a pattern that ran through almost every session: the word “scaled” appeared constantly, private sector representatives sat on nearly every panel, and the underlying message was consistent — official development assistance is shrinking, so private capital must fill the gap. This is a reasonable response to a real problem. However, private capital needs returns, operates on short timelines, and flows toward stable environments. The communities that need the most help are rarely found in those places. 

As a student of environmental and sustainability sciences, I kept thinking that a conference so focused on mobilizing private investment should also spend more time on the cases where market logic and sustainability logic simply do not align. That question was rarely asked out loud.

Networking at an event like this is harder than it sounds when you are a student. Everyone around you has a title, an institution, and something concrete to offer. I found that the only thing that actually opened conversations was having something real to talk about, not a title, but a question, a local context, a problem I was genuinely trying to solve. That is probably the most useful thing I am taking home from Hamburg: you do not need to have everything figured out, but you need to have something that is actually yours.

Andreas Tevosyan’s Reflections

Sustainability as a concept also involves politics and governance, where policies are discussed, ideas are shared, hardships, especially those faced by people living in the Global South, are unveiled, and solutions are proposed, involving multiple levels of government, the private sector, and civil society. This sparked my interest in the implementation aspect of sustainability-focused governance, which aligns with my academic background.

The sessions of the conference I attended featured the global economy, conflict in numerous parts of the world, migration, fiscal policies, academic freedom, and proposals for new partnerships between private actors and states. Those were organized by speakers representing the German Federal Government, representatives from the UN, various states, civil society, and the private sector.

A memorable milestone for me was the launch of the South-North Commission on Development, organized by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, aiming to strengthen international partnerships between the Global South and North. 

It is based on the legacy of the North-South Commission, established in 1977 and led by Willy Brandt, the renowned German statesman who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1969 to 1974. In the middle of a heatwave that particularly affected many European countries, the global anomalies resulting from climate change should serve as painful reminders that the Global South will be hit the hardest, hence the urgency of establishing an independent commission that will provide research and development plans with the expertise of its two co-chairs, Laura Chinchilla, former president of Costa Rica, and Olaf Scholz, former chancellor of Germany, alongside a robust team of professionals, including political scientists, environmental experts, and business leaders.

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s ideas about the Commission were remarkable for me. The Director-General of the World Trade Organization specifically mentioned the desire of the people of the Global South to reimagine aspects of global trade and economy, considering the changing factors between parts of the world in climate, environmental issues, population, and economic development, blessing the effort of the Commission with the hope that new methods and questions will be generated for the emerging trends between world regions and the above mentioned factors.

One thing I found inspiring outside of the conference was the level of care reflected in people’s everyday culture regarding sustainability in the city of Hamburg. As a port city, it was also actively committed to more sustainable means of transport, such as biking, walking, and an overall efficient and well-organized public transportation system. From talking to locals to networking with like-minded people at the conference, I brought these ideas back to Armenia and would love to figure out how to implement them along with other sustainable lifestyles in Armenia’s cultural and political context.