In this section, we provide context and outline defining aspects of the youth climate justice movement.
Emergence of the Youth Climate Justice Movement
The environmental justice movement preceded the climate justice movement in drawing attention to the disproportionate environmental degradation experienced by communities of color (McKenzie et al., 2017; Mitchell & DâOnofrio, 2016). Resistance to activities that harm the environment has, of course, been led by Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities (BIPoC) since long before the term environmental justice began to be used by Black people in the Civil Rights Movement in the USA in the 1960s (Stephens, 1996).
The climate justice movement is said to have begun by critiquing the carbon-driven economy as an indicator of larger inequities exploited by global capitalism (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). The movement originated with a focus on eradicating the causes of climate change and addressing the inequitable impacts of the oil industry (Bruno et al., 1999). CorpWatch, an NGO that helped organize the first-ever known Climate Justice Summit during COP 6 in 2000, became one of the major movement organizations, along with Climate Justice Now! at the Bali COP13 meetings in 2007 (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). The climate justice movement focuses on how climate change disproportionately impacts marginalized groups and the worldâs poorest countries.
The movement recently gained tremendous traction, revitalized and invigorated by youth activists. In 2015, a group of students invited youth worldwide to miss school on the first day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (Climate Strike, 2016). On November 30, 2015, supported by several organizations including 350.org, a climate strike took place in over 100 countries from Melbourne to Mexico City, with more than 50,000 people participating (Phipps et al., 2015). In addition to demanding 100% clean energy and to keep fossil fuels in the ground, protesters and activists were pushing for a bolder international agreement at the climate summit (Adam & Siddiqui, 2015). The international agreement was negotiated over the period of two weeks during the Paris United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changeâs (UNFCCC) 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21). The Paris Agreement was finally adopted on December 12, 2015, which was a âhistoric turning point for global climate actionâ as it was a point when âworld leaders came to a consensus on an accord comprised of commitments by 195 nations to combat climate change and adapt to its impactsâ (Denchak, 2021, para. 2).
The climate strike of November 2015 and the establishment of the Paris Agreement gave rise to a proliferation of new movements and organizations oriented towards climate justice, including: Zero Hour (2017), the Sunrise Movement (2017), and Fridays for Future (2018). However, this is not to say that there were none prior to 2015; other organizations include: Greenpeace (1971), the IPCC (1988), 350.org (2007), Guardians of the Forest, also known as Guardians of the Amazon (2013), and Project Drawdown (2014). Some have deep roots. For instance, Guardians of the Forest are a group of 120 Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian state of MaranhĂŁo who have been defending their land and the remaining Amazon rainforest for more than five centuries. When asked when they were founded, one of the leaders of the group, Olimpio Santos Guajajara, answered: âin 1500, the year the Portuguese landed in Brazil with an armada under the command of Pedro Ălvares Cabralâ (Libardi, 2020, para. 1).
Youth activism itself is also not new; youth aged 18â30 have participated in both local and international social movements across the world for decades. They have been instrumental in fighting for social justice, including in feminist, environmentalist, anti-war, immigrant rights, and the US Civil Rights movements. In relation to climate change activism, youth in Australia, for example, formed the Australian Youth Climate Coalition in November 2006 to organize and involve youth in demanding climate change actions from government leaders (Munro, 2009). What is relatively new and specific to the current youth climate justice movement is that youth activists are positioned as leaders, where they are asked to speak at international governmental meetings, have rallied millions, and are leading robust social movements aimed at stopping the existential crisis of our time (Bowman, 2020a; Han & Ahn, 2020). Canadian water warrior Autumn Peltier, Land Protector Quannah Chasinghorse, Little Miss Flint (Amariyanna âMaryâ Copeny), the Guardians of the Forest, and Zeena Abdulkarim (from Zero Hour) are among many inspiring youths who are leading the climate justice movement today (Janfaza, 2020). The work achieved by such resilient Black, Indigenous, and racialized youth activists will be discussed in further sections.
Justice as Central for Youth Climate Activists
Marginalized communities are at the forefront of experiencing the negative impacts of climate change, with Indigenous peoples worldwide often the first to suffer, given their intimate relationship with the environment. This includes Indigenous peoples from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maldives, the Himalayas, Bangladesh, the Amazon, and the Arctic regions (Etchart, 2017; Haluza-Delay, 2013). Greta Thunberg (2019), the Swedish teen whose 2018 school climate strike sparked a huge wave of youth protest, consistently highlights âequityâ in her speeches, including: âthe people who have contributed the least to this crisis are the ones who are going to be affected the mostâ (pp. 39â40). Whereas the focus of mainstream climate change movements is often on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the youth climate justice movement emphasizes disproportionate climate change impacts and insists that these inequities must be addressed at a governmental level.
Climate justice is a contested concept, developing out of policy discourses (e.g., Robinson, 2018), liberal philosophy, and the youth climate justice movement (McGregor et al., 2018). It differs from environmental racism, environmental justice, or ecojustice, though they often get grouped together or are used interchangeably in some contexts (see Haluza-Delay, 2013). Like environmental justice, many scholars have advocated the use of climate justice to describe the effects of climate change through a human rights lens and social justice framework (Haluza-Delay et al., 2009; Klein, 2014; Stapleton, 2019; Tuck & Yang, 2018). Movements focused on climate justice aim to disrupt oppressive systems of colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and racism, and try to reimagine the current inequitable system so those who are already underprivileged are not further disadvantaged by climate change (Kanbur, 2018; Stapleton, 2019).
As many youth activists have continuously asserted, climate injustices are not merely environmental issues but also racial injustices and gender injustices (McKibben, 2017). However, the claims of youth climate activists are not homogeneous nor are their experiences; and they may be better understood as a âpolyphonic movementâ (Bowman, 2020b). Nevertheless, youth climate activist messaging has a common characteristic that focuses on intergenerational injustices of climate disruption; that is, climate change will affect their futures and that adults have not acted with moral responsibility and obligation (Robinson, 2018). Given that youth are in marginalized positions (Bowman, 2020b), and that intergenerational injustice is the starting point of their climate concerns (Thew et al., 2020), the youth climate activist movement is embedded with an intersectional view, advocating for lenses of equity, anti-oppression, and anti-racism to be permanently integrated into decision-making with a focus on addressing the underlying roots of climate injustices (Damico et al., 2020; Klein, 20...
