APOLITICAL 08/19/24
By Michael Shank

The problem: When governments engage youth in climate and environmental programming, it’s often at the peripheries of key decision-making processes. Youth are not given real power in the process.

Why it matters: Youth are not only inheriting this warming world, but they’ve got new and improved ideas, energy and creativity necessary for the climate movement right now.

The solution: Government programming that shares power with youth leaders in a genuinely co-led and co-created way must be scaled up and out.

For the environmental community, the largely youth-led anti-war protests that occurred across American college campuses and cities this year should inspire new thinking about how to organise climate activism across every sector of society.

The protests — targeting everything from primary ballot boxes and big businesses to policymakers’ hearings and university investments — have been constant, creative, courageous and uncowed. And yes, climate activism has shared these characteristics — the global school strike for climate is an inspiring example — but the anti-war activism we’re witnessing this year feels next level.

There’s another lesson here for the climate community. It has to do with the message emanating loudly from the younger generations who are activating in new ways. They’re increasingly demanding a seat at the table and a voice in how decisions are being made, and they will continue to leverage their political, financial and physical presence and power until things change.

To be clear, this movement will not magically go away. This is a new era of awareness and activism, and it should be welcomed, especially by the climate community. But it also means that local governments will need to adjust. There’s plenty happening on this front to integrate youth into climate-related decision-making in meaningful, not tokenised, ways. It has to be authentic and substantive. Anything less is called out.

Take the United Nations Development Program, for example, which recently released a six-step guide “to ensure young people can participate in climate policy on equal terms”. It covers everything from demonstrating political commitment and building the capacity of young people to engage to creating an inclusive design process for national climate commitments. That last bit is not insignificant — codesigning nationally determined contributions to climate goal-setting — and, if implemented, signals a seriousness to power-sharing with youth.

Further up the UN chain of command, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres elevated the youth voice recently, creating an Envoy on Youth to ensure younger generations were not only at the table but running point on a range of sustainability-focused programming. The office is now generating climate leadership opportunities for youth all around the world, including at UN headquarters.

It’s time we listened and elevated the youth voice in every aspect of local governance, especially climate governance. The planet will thank us.

International institutions everywhere are recognising the need and opportunity here. Last year, Local Governments for Sustainability, known as ICLEI, launched a Youth Climate Council Startup Toolkit to serve as a guide for local governments to make “space for youth voices and representation within city climate change conversations and action”. The climate nonprofit C40 also has a Youth Engagement Playbook for Cities as a “guide to tackling the climate crisis through collaboration with youth”.

Local governments are launching new initiatives in this space, too. Seattle hosts a Youth Transportation Summit to centre youth voices in climate-responsive transportation investments. Vancouver partners with a local university to host a Sustainability Scholars program. San Francisco just partnered with its school district to launch a Climate Action Fellowship to “empower youth to take climate action and build hope around climate change”.

Los Angeles County has a Youth Climate Commission to advise the Board of Supervisors and County departments on climate-related goals, plans, actions, policies and initiatives. Hawaii organises a Youth Congress to bring together youth to collaboratively steer the course toward a more sustainable future. In fact, many cities, counties and states are developing similar initiatives.

All of this is good. And yet younger generations will likely and understandably demand more since youth engagement by governments can still read as peripheral to the key decision-making processes and thus performative. That’s especially true when younger generations are already less trusting of key institutions than their elders were.

With half of the world’s population under 30, they often still have little say over decisions defining their future — especially on climate change, the very issue that 80% of them worry about. That needs to change. They need to be co-creating and designing climate action and policy, leading climate offices and running climate programs.

That’s exactly what Bloomberg Philanthropies hopes to spur with its recent micro-grants announcement to “fund a groundswell of youth-led climate initiatives”. In their words, that could include co-governed youth climate action plans, youth-driven climate mitigation and adaptation work and youth-led research and development initiatives. The grants are important seed investments, and for this power-sharing to really materialise more funding from philanthropy will clearly be needed.

The times are changing, folks and younger generations are rightly demanding more. If the protests across campuses and cities illustrate anything, it’s the overwhelming discontent and dis-ease among youth under 30. That’s an opportunity to harness energy versus disregarding or dismissing it. This much-needed new energy and initiative could fuel new government action on climate. We need it. With last year clocking the highest emissions and the hottest year on record, business as usual clearly isn’t cutting it.

It’s time to pass the baton to half the world’s population who sees what’s coming down the pike and is increasingly anxious about it. That means we’re turning over the reins to youth-led climate planning, mitigation and adaptation and research and development. As we should, they know what’s up.

In doing so, we get three co-benefits, in addition to their smarts.

First, we get more energy. The younger generation is ready for the long game and ready to sacrifice and get outside their comfort zone. Let’s harness that commitment and perseverance.

Second, we get more buy-in. Moving a previously disaffected and disengaged group into the decision-making room is essential for trust-and-will-building. It’s their future, and understandably, they want a say in it.

Third, we get more creative brain power. The climate movement could use a good jolt of creative juices and energy. It can get stale fast. We could use the TikTok generation and the artistic skills that come with it, leading the movement.

The anti-war protests across campuses and cities sent a clear message. It’s time we listened and elevated the youth voice in every aspect of local governance, especially climate governance. The planet will thank us.

Dr Michael Shank is an Adjunct Faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and a Visiting Scholar at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.