Sidra Riaz

Sidra Riaz is ClimateWatch's External Advisor on Youth Climate Diplomacy and UNFCCC Engagement.

She is a PhD scholar in Public Affairs at Florida International University and a Presidential Fellow, and was previously a senior lecturer at the National University of Modern Languages in Islamabad. She holds an M.Phil in Government and Public Policy from National Defence University.

She has served as a UN Youth Delegate to the UN Climate Change Conferences, including COP29 in Azerbaijan and COP30 in Brazil, and as a UN Women Delegate at CSW70. She sits on the UNFCCC Youth Policy Team and co-authored the COP30 Global Youth Statement and the SB64 Policy Position Paper.

She founded Environmental Change Makers, a youth-led climate education organisation, and has given more than seventy talks worldwide, including two TEDx talks and interventions at the United Nations General Assembly. She has co-authored nine peer-reviewed publications, and holds the CLCGlobal 100 Global Women Leaders Award and the APPAM Excellence, Equity and Inclusion Fellowship.

She advises ClimateWatch on youth engagement in UNFCCC processes: how youth positions are negotiated and carried into formal text, and how ClimateWatch's own negotiation reporting and submissions land in that space.