Young People and Climate Activism

Abstract

Young people’s climate activism is an emerging subfield within youth studies and environmental politics. It is of growing importance to students and researchers of young people, environmentalism, climate change, social change, democratic participation, and various other topics. While these fields have been revitalized by movements such as Fridays for Future (FFF) and School Strike for Climate (SS4C), scholarly interest in youth climate activism also derives from the complex and conceptually challenging nature of young activism, politics, and participation, and from a—still nascent—broadening of environmental movements toward greater social inclusion. Readers with interests in these conceptual counterparts can follow up examples in Starting Points and Special Issues and Collections. Subsequently, the collection includes three subsections organized under the title Storying Youth Climate Activism. The choice of the present continuous verb tense for this section reflects the ongoing and evolving nature of youth climate activism. This is followed by three subsections under the heading Repertoires of Activism, which relate to the various modes of action taken by young people across the world as they engage in action toward climate justice. In continuation, Intergenerational Interactions is organized into two sections, the first on media presentations of youth climate activism, and the second on young people and policymaking on climate change. Youth climate activism has also generated many valuable practical resources, some of which are included in the final section on Resources for Activists and Allies. Readers may trace a number of ongoing complexities that run across the collection and reflect the emerging, messy, and sometimes contradictory nature of youth climate activism and the scholarship written about it. Such complexities include the uncertain boundaries between what counts as activism and what does not, an expanding range of political repertoires, and the various ways young people are forging intergenerational and international solidarities based on calls for climate justice. Multiple inequalities mean that activism and activists in the Global North are more strongly represented in academic literature than those in the Global South (and, henceforth, in this collection), but this does not mean those Southern activisms and activists do not exist. Indeed, as can be seen in the Storying Youth Climate Activism sections, many climate justice, environmental justice, and climate action movements can be traced to the theory and action of marginalized people and communities of color in the Global South.