Empowering Youthwork for the Green Debate Showcased at Copenhagen Open 2025

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Mar 01, 2025

In February 2025, the Copenhagen Debating Society hosted one of the largest debate gatherings in Northern Europe: Copenhagen Open 2025. This year, the tournament was even more special, as it was combined with the multiplier event for the Erasmus+ project “Empowering Youthwork for the Green Debate.” The partnership allowed hundreds of young debaters to not only compete in a prestigious international tournament but also explore the results of the project and actively test their skills on topics central to the global climate conversation.

Bringing Green Debate to the Forefront

The Erasmus+ project Empowering Youthwork for the Green Debate has focused on developing innovative ways to use debate as a tool for youth engagement, education, and critical thinking, especially about environmental issues. By integrating the project’s outcomes into Copenhagen Open, the organizers ensured that participants from across Europe were exposed to fresh ideas, educational resources, and a vibrant exchange of perspectives.

Feedback from the event highlighted its success in merging competition with capacity-building. Many participants reported that they not only sharpened their debating abilities but also left with a deeper awareness of how youth dialogue can influence sustainability debates at both the local and global levels.

Motions that Sparked Conversation

Among the motions debated at the event were some challenging questions facing environmental movements today, such as:

This House Believes That environmental movements should support the use of ecoterrorism.
This House would require multinational corporations to pay taxes primarily in countries where their production occurs rather than where intellectual property is held.

These motions pushed participants to wrestle with complex ethical and policy dilemmas, ensuring that the debates were not only about winning rounds but also about grappling with the real-world tensions in global environmental action. To help, within the project, we developed case studies exploring some aspects of these questions.