A new youth-led report by Plan International released last week reveals that young people living in the most vulnerable places in the world are leading the fight in climate action.
The report, released by Plan International, a charity for girls’ equality, gathered information from young researchers and youth groups across nine countries including Ethiopia, Fiji, Indonesia, Laos, Mozambique, Myanmar, Solomon Islands, Uganda and Zimbabwe — countries where the climate crisis is impacting the lives of people daily.
The report, titled Rising Tides, presents information on the latest youth-led and youth-supported groups that are working with industry and NGOs to advocate for renewable energy, reforestation, ecosystem protection, better waste management, and more resilient infrastructure and social systems.
Several youth groups are also emphasising the intersections of climate resilience with gender equality, safe housing, sanitation, and inclusive education.
These youth groups are working across various scales and intersections. In the Solomon Islands, the National Youth Congress are organising local agroforestry activities.
In Ethiopia, youth-led groups are trying to lobby for equity and climate justice. In Indonesia, testimonies from diverse youth groups focusing on climate change proved the effectiveness of online events and forums in bringing many different groups together.
The Indonesian youth group, Cerita Iklim creates social media content that condenses academic articles into accessible, informative info-graphs.
In Australia, Imogen Senior, Plan International’s youth activist, is the Program Coordinator and Director of Anxiety to Action, a new program that aims to combat young people’s climate anxiety and redirect it into hope and action.
Launched next week, the program will be offered in the form of workshops, bringing young people together with experts in grief, policy, and campaigning.
The program hopes to increase political literacy and engagement among young people who are anxious but not connected to politics.
“By personalising the effects of climate change, and the policy to combat it, we can convey our climate anxieties in ways that are productive, political and aspirational,” the program’s website states.
“We are taking a core group of people on a journey of climate anxiety to hope to action. This process is informed by a deepening of political awareness and literacy, and then training on media engagement.”
“These people then take this knowledge of policy development and analysis, campaign theory and political awareness to their own networks. We work through our own anxiety as a group to produce a campaign that personalises policy and climate change through engagement with media.”
“We are asking, what happens when we truly trust in young people,” Imogen Senior said in a statement.
“We believe in them, validate their fears, anxiety and anger around the climate crisis… and by focusing on these emotions we can personalise the effects and policy of climate change, allowing us to move beyond awareness to a space of expertise from lived experience and hope in a better world,” she said.
The Melbourne-based activist, who has spoken out about a range of issues including online abuse, gender inequality and youth-led social politics, famously penned an open letter addressed to then-Prime Minister, Tony Abbott in 2013, calling him out for his handling of immigration detention facilities.
The program will run every Tuesday starting March 15, and move through stages and focuses, including workshops on Indigenous activism and meditation, visioning, interdisciplinary climate action and media training.
One workshop will invite the director of the Post Growth Institute, Donnie Maclurcan to speak about his ideas.
So far, the program has 10 participants, mostly women, aged between 15-22 years old, though Senior is looking to expand the group.
“I’m hoping to have more people with lived experiences of the impacts of climate change,” Senior told Women’s Agenda.
Patience Sibanda, one of the report’s authors from Zimbabwe, believes that the work being done by youth to fight the climate crisis is “absolutely impressive.”
“They’re not waiting for funding,” she said. “They are using whatever they have to disseminate climate information to their peers and communities they operate in and with such determination and efforts we will reduce climate vulnerabilities.”
A 2021 Plan International survey of more than 1,800 adolescents from 37 countries found that 84 percent of young people believe their government’s efforts to include them in policies to tackle the climate emergency are not enough.
The survey also found that young people, especially girls and those with a disability, are not substantially referenced as stakeholders or relevant cohorts in policy-making processes.
Plan’s latest research proposes several recommendations on how to change these figures, including extending partnerships with youth organisations, facilitating connections and mentorships, funding long term financial grants and seeking donors who are willing to engage with youth groups through nourishing dialogues.
Plan International Australia’s CEO, Susanne Legena said that the unravelling climate emergency is the most pressing injustice of our time.
“It exacerbates existing inequalities in society, girls and young women are disproportionately affected,” she said.
“This new research into climate resilience and youth movements around the globe shows that for young people, the climate crisis is not just about the climate. It encompasses a broader vision of healing our relationship with nature and tackling unjust societal structures.”
“The only way to achieve sustainable climate resilience is through youth leadership and fully engaging girls and young women in all of their diversities in climate action,” she said.
Last year, Senior wrote about the importance of listening to young people.
“We should listen to youth because youth have an unbridled hope, an untamed passion for what we want to see in the world, an openness to new ideas and learning and people,” she explained.
“This is why I surround myself with young activists, because it renews so much hope that the world can get better. I know that as a young woman, I have ideas that are new and valuable and exciting, and I know that these should be heard.”
“Changing the world is collective, and at its heart lies a capacity to listen. I have learnt that for every pain I feel while sitting as a woman, there are millions I do not see or feel because of my white skin.”
“For every frustration at men’s lack of understanding, there is frustration directed toward my ignorance. I have learnt I must educate myself, have uncomfortable conversations with family members about racism, and that this is not enough – I have so far to go before I am actively anti-racist.”