Today’s children and young people are facing challenges unique in human history. Their generation will have to deal with unmatched climate extremes. According to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), children born in 2020 will face almost three times as many wildfires, droughts, crop failures, and almost seven times more heatwaves than people born in the 1960s if global temperatures rise to between 2.6 and 3.1 degrees Celsius. This unfolding climate emergency has become a major cause of distress among the youth. Anxiety related to environmental collapse or eco-anxiety has reportedly appeared and burgeoned within the last two decades, especially among individuals not older than 24 years.
Meanwhile, a new type of nostalgia called Solastalgia, described as “the homesickness you have when you are still at home”, but the surrounding environment is changing in a worrying way, was coined in 2003. In other words, it refers to the nostalgia for an almost irrecoverable healthy environment. A new study based on surveys with 10,000 children and young people across ten countries found that 75 percent of the respondents believed that their future was frightening, while 64 per cent claimed that their governments were not taking sufficient action to stop the impending climate catastrophe.
Youth worldwide are inspiring hope and taking action to end climate inertia and prevent this year’s drastic weather events from becoming the new normal. Their engagement ranges from school strikes to speaking their mind at different international summits, from setting up trash cleanups in their neighbourhood to volunteering with nonprofits across oceans, from studying environmental sciences to working for sustainable development in high-level institutions.
This International Youth Day must be an occasion for everyone to reaffirm their support for these voices and efforts. And if young people by themselves have found many ways to contribute to tackling the climate crisis, older individuals must, on their side, provide the means to amplify them.
So how can adults help create an enabling environment for youth action on climate change?
Sowing the seeds of awareness through education
While various measures are to be discussed, all of them rest on the foundation of education and awareness. As the first generation to come of age as we approach the point of no return, building literacy on the complex issue of climate change from a young age has become necessary for cultivating the knowledge, competencies, behavioural change, and resolve to help forge a greener future. The role of education in promoting a deep personal understanding of the climate crisis has long been emphasised as a part of the plan of action to guarantee that life in the next millennium will change substantially for the better. As early as 1992, 172 countries came together to acknowledge the need for more in-depth climate education:
“Education, including formal education, public awareness and training, should be recognised as a process by which human beings and societies can reach their fullest potential. Education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of the people to address environment and development issues. While basic education provides the underpinning for any environmental and development education, the latter needs to be incorporated as an essential part of learning…To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual) development, should be integrated in all disciplines, and should employ formal and non-formal methods and effective means of communication.”
Some countries have taken the initiative to refresh their secondary and tertiary curriculum to integrate critical thinking and emotional awareness in relation to climate change. In Nepal, the national curriculum for compulsory science courses for Grades 9 and 10 has been broadened to include an enhanced explanation of key terms to understand climate change, such as adaptation and mitigation, along with sample actions for Nepal. The university courses have included new specialisations in sector-wise consequences of climate change and methodologies for developing adaptation strategies. In New Zealand, new curriculum resources to support young people with co-designing innovative solutions for climate action are underpinned by three key concepts rooted in Māori philosophy: tūrangawaewae (Understanding how we are connected to our land and people, and developing a sense of belonging to a common humanity); kaitiakitanga (Reflecting on the external world around them and stepping outside the school to engage with local land and sea to actively make a difference); whakapuāwai (Developing capability in harmony with a natural and vital world to create conditions for flourishing human capital, green entrepreneurs, and future-focused solutions.)
On a more global level, the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in 2021 aimed to define how best to use the transformative power of education to address the global challenges our societies face. From this exceptional event was born the Berlin declaration, unprecedentedly recognising the role that education has in tackling the ecological crisis. The conference was building on the ESD for 2030 strategy that UNESCO launched in 2020, which, under the 4th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. Its paves the path for advancing policy at the governmental level, changing and updating what is being taught in school, going forward with transforming learning environments and conducting capacity-building activities among teachers so young people can be empowered; hence mobilising and enabling youth to accelerate transformative local level actions. Through their learnings at school, the youth is able to transfer knowledge into the home, among their peers, communities, and the professional spheres once they enter the workforce. Some noteworthy Youth-to-Youth platforms dedicated to driving collective action through knowledge sharing are Force of nature, Y2Y Initiative, Swiss Youth for Climate, and One Young World.
From education to innovation
Indeed education can lead to innovation, and this transformative potential can be further encouraged and developed both by traditional and non-traditional educational organisations. The Villars Institute, in the middle of the Swiss Alps, is an example of the latter as it started in 2022 a programme of intergenerational collaboration. Through meetings and workshops, it gathers leading experts with nominated young fellows, aged 13 to 19 and nicknamed the “Net Zero Generation”, to kick start their long journey to become change makers. The proposed lectures broach a variety of topics such as social entrepreneurship, nature-based solutions, or emerging technologies, with the objective of providing skills enabling youth to drive system-level change and induce “collective action” that could solve the ever more complex problems of our time. Within the scope of tertiary education, new kinds of curriculums are emerging with the hope of fostering innovative responses to the climate crisis. HEC Paris, one of the leading business schools in Europe, recently created a Master in Sustainable and Social Innovation “designed for current aspiring changemakers to develop the skills and knowledge needed to transform both society and enterprises into more sustainable practices”, according to the institution. Diverse academies are joining the movement of offering degrees focusing on innovative concepts growing in prominence and popularity: the University of Graz, Austria, is now running an International Master in Circular Economy and the National University of Singapore crafted an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation and Nature-based Climate Solutions. Those are fields of study that just a generation above may not have seen in the lists of courses they themselves had to choose a few years ago. And those do not limit to specialised masters. Vanderbilt University in the United-States is one of the first to create a whole major dedicated to climate studies, bringing the topic to the classrooms as early as freshman year.
From innovation to on-ground action
Non-governmental organisations are a third platform that can promote youth education on climate change topics and bring innovation to on-ground actions. Created by famous British primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall in 1991, Roots and Shoots is an international initiative that encourages teachers to set up teaching projects to bring local children around an environmental theme. The general objective of Roots and Shoots is to empower them “to affect positive change in their communities.” The Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) created multiple programmes promoting action-based learning, such as Eco-Schools, which engage schools and pupils globally on environmental topics, significantly raising awareness on littering and protecting biodiversity via hands-on experience.
Initiatives creating new types of forums for youth’s voice are flourishing around the planet, gaining tremendous momentum even within supranational organisations. Young Reporters for the Environment, another project coordinated by the organisation, provides climate-minded millennials with a platform to express their voice and take a stand through journalism. Participants in the programmes are involved in various activities, from conducting investigations on environmental issues to attending high-level UN conferences for which they produce in-depth writing pieces, video or photo reportages.
Defined as the “youth equivalent” of the Conferences of the Parties (COPs), Conferences of Youth (COY) have been conducted since 2005, and their importance was formally recognised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the organiser of COPs, in 2011. Since then, they keep occurring alongside COPs officially representing the voice of youth, cumulating 15 events and over 50,000 individuals involved as of 2021. In the wake of those growing events, in July 2020, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched its Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, gathering promising profiles from the five continents to assist the implementation of the United Nations climate strategy. In September the same year, the UN hosted the first Youth Summit for Climate Change that served as a unique occasion for young climate leaders to share their solutions and engage with high-level policymakers.
Reinforced education for unteachable solutions
Altogether, from universities to elementary schools, from UNESCO-led global initiatives to experiential learning in neighbourhoods, achievements in the field of education are already immense. But in front of the even greater challenges of our times which remain unknown and unpredictable due to their uniqueness and novelty, previous generations can and must generate wider efforts to enable newer ones to create innovative answers, from politics to technology, which may be required to address them. The youth — anxious, frightened, peaceful or determined — will continue to band together to save their and the planet’s future. However, the amount and quality of knowledge, experience and support passed on from previous generations is likely to constitute a crucial factor determining the success of any actions undertaken toward fighting the climate crisis.
