Challenges to Youth Engagement

While many young people across the globe are making outstanding efforts to advocate for climate change mitigation and adaptation, various systemic issues act as barriers and limitations to youth engagement in their fight for climate action.

Tokenism of Youth in Climate Change Discourse

While the advantages of incorporating youth voices and opinions in the sphere of climate change are widely acknowledged and understood, overlying ageist discourses still regard youth as problematic and ungrateful for the efforts of the older generation.³⁴ Opportunities for engagement continue to be lacking, and when youth are included, their contributions tend to be overlooked.^36,37 Tokenism refers to the process in which the practice of inclusion is purely symbolic.³⁶ In conversations around climate change, the meaningful contributions of youth have often been disregarded in adult-dominated spaces. In other words, youth participants have been tokenized rather than empowered, due to the lack of recognition of the valuable insight they can provide.^36,37

Youth tokenism has been a political strategy that more and more youth are calling out climate change leaders for furthering their personal agendas. Their frustrations result from international events, where youth are often chosen to speak seemingly on behalf of all the world’s young people and then used for photo opportunities by leaders hoping to fuel their own political agendas by the perception of youth engagement.³⁷ The most recent COP26 conference in Glasgow was promised to be the ‘most inclusive COP ever,’ yet was criticized by sidelined groups for the lack of opportunities to have their voices heard and have meaningful engagement, instead however, they were just ‘there.’³⁸ Indigenous youth and youth from countries in the Global South, in particular, felt these sentiments.³⁸

According to Hart’s ladder of youth engagement based on the events of COP26, the final stage of Youth/Adult equity is far from being achieved on the global level. Many world leaders still tokenize youth for their political gains, choosing an opportunity for a photo op to garner youth support over thoughtfully collaborating or empowering youth voices and ideas.

Arora and colleagues outline four mechanisms that can help to avoid tokenism by championing youth in planetary health action, including integration, education, climate health storytelling, and investment.³⁹

Integration begins with mechanisms of (1) consulting existing youth advocates, (2) developing longitudinal relationships with youth-led networks, (3) providing visibility to youth engagement initiatives, and (4) ensuring accountability for engaging young people.³⁹ Education is a necessary component as a movement cannot find momentum without understanding the issues at hand. This means removing barriers by increasing what is currently lacking in the education system.³⁹ Next, climate health storytelling or showcasing the lived experiences of young people is important as this can tap into core human values of empathy and understanding while simultaneously amplifying the voices of those who will be dealing with the consequences of climate change.³⁹ The last component is monetary and non-monetary investment, that will sustain and support these mechanisms of integration, education and climate health storytelling.³⁹ Championing youth as leaders of planetary health would be a positive step in fighting the climate crisis. It is important for leaders to move away from the current norm of tokenization and to instead see the value and advantages of authentic collaboration with youth leaders.

Eco-Anxiety and Youth Mental Health

As previously mentioned in Chapter 5, scholars have noted the increasing concern about the impacts of climate change on mental health.⁴⁰ Youth carry the heaviest burden, with the consequences of climate change directly impacting their future. Eco-anxiety, an emerging term defining anxiety occurring as a result of fear for our environment, has been found to affect at least 60% of youth (from a sample of 10,000 respondents aged 16 to 25), with 45% reporting that this anxiety had an impact on their daily lives.^41-43

In particular, rural youth are at an increased risk of dealing with eco-anxiety. The increased exposure to natural disasters such as fires, mudslides, and floods have caused property damages, displacement, and even deaths of community and family members that are damaging to the overall mental health of rural youth.⁴⁴ Furthermore, the destruction of their physical environment and geographic isolation severely limits access to mental health resources that can support rural youth.⁴⁵

“Global warming, abortion laws, sexism, racism, truly the list is endless. So, we scream. We are scared, and we are many, and we are scared.”
– Youth participant⁴⁴

An opinion piece published by the British Medical Journal outlines suggestions for youth to cope with eco-anxiety and other climate change-related stressors.⁴⁶ This includes having access to the best and most reliable information on climate mitigation and adaptation which keeps youth informed about the situation and helps to mitigate anxiety. The authors encourage youth to spend time in nature and align themselves with others holding like-minded interests in protecting the environment, which can increase perceptions of efficacy.⁴⁶ The feelings of progress in making a change on a smaller scale will translate into change on the broader level.⁴⁷

“Simply talking about the issue with the older generation and understanding the progress and mistakes they made along the way can help young people feel more at ease with the creation of their own personal plan of action on how they can affect change within their community.”
– Justin Langan, a Metis youth advocate⁴⁷

Finally, it is vital not to portray youth as victims facing the climate change crisis.³⁵ This only fuels negative perceptions of youth and encourages young people to accept their role as victims in this situation, which significantly inhibits their motivation to take action against climate change and seek solutions.³⁵

The Disconnect Between Concern and Action

Most youth worldwide are worried about climate change and the state of the world;⁴⁸ however, there has been a disconnect between concern and action taken.⁴⁹ Studies show that many youth are willing to partake in more pro-environmental behaviour yet often opt for actions that are perceived as easier (but less effective) than more effective behaviours that require greater effort.^49-51 Other youth felt that their actions would not yield meaningful change.

This is reflective of the ideas presented in Chapter 6. To review, Bandura’s social cognitive theory is built on four concepts; self efficacy, goal commitment, outcome expectations and expected outcomes.⁵²

Applying Social Cognitive Theory

Self-efficacy

As the messaging around climate change grows more bleak, youth and their perceptions that their actions are meaningful in the fight against climate change. The solution to this is empowerment. Some prominent youth activists have had success mobilizing other youth to take a stand against climate change with the help of social media.⁵³ While some youth may feel a lack of self-efficacy when it comes to climate change, Bandura and Cherry claim that “a single environmental activist with a robust sense of self-efficacy can exert a limitless reach and widespread influence by posting on the Internet how other viewers, too, can become involved in the environmental movement.”⁵² Notable influential youth figures include Greta Thunberg, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, and Autumn Peltier.

Goal Commitment

With social media, online shopping, and more, youth today are accustomed to instant gratification. As such, goal commitment can create a disconnect between concern and action. Since the benefits of pro-environmental behaviour are often observed more gradually over time, the younger generation being wired to receive instant gratification may be discouraging when the benefits of their changed behaviour are not observed as quickly as they desired.⁵⁴

Outcome Expectations

Western culture is generally dominated by individualistic ideologies. However, it has been noted that rural communities lean more towards collectivist values than urban areas. As a result, the perceived personal ‘inconvenience’ of engaging in more pro-environmental behaviour may outweigh the perceived importance placed upon caring for the collective, more so for urban than rural youth who have been less affected by climate disasters.^55,56 Studies have noted that those living in rural areas tend to be more motivated to partake in green behaviours due to their proximity to nature, thus seeing the value of it more than those living in urban centres.^44,55

Expected Outcomes

Rural youth have more immediately faced the consequences of the climate crisis compared to urban youth.⁴⁴ Thus , the immediacy of climate action may serve as a stronger motivator to partake in more green behaviours for rural youth than urban youth. Seeing success as a result of their actions serves as a positive observed consequence of the efforts rural communities have been making towards climate change and helps increase motivation to continue these behaviours.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) affirms youth as vital stakeholders in the Lima Ministerial Declaration on Education and Awareness-raising.⁶⁰ This declaration was proposed from the deliberations made at COP20. They emphasize the need for youth to participate and have access to the climate change knowledge that is necessary for creating and implementing effective policies.⁶¹ However, despite the obvious urgency, governments have failed to provide the essential educational resources. This creates a significant barrier for youth to even become aware of climate change-related issues, having to then rely on their agency and willingness alone to independently seek out information on social media or other learning platforms. While utilizing these resources is important, it cannot serve as the only solution. This does not account for youth who do not have the privilege and the spare time outside of school hours to dedicate to learning about climate change. Mobilizing a generation to fight for a social movement would be impossible without equipping them with a greater understanding of the situation, which is expected to translate into action.

‘Kids these days’ vs ‘OK Boomer’: The Generational Divide

Those who have overcome the barriers to education and obtaining knowledge now face another barrier: the space and platforms for their voices to be heard. This is partially due to the generational divide between young and older populations.

Younger populations have blamed adults for the current state of the world and feel frustrated for now being the ones to face the consequences of their actions.^63,64 Meanwhile, the older generation looks at youth as entitled and “[unappreciative of] the progress that came before them. They use the freedoms their forebears fought for to whine about their feelings online.”⁶² These perceptions have resulted in ineffective collaboration on both sides, where the older generation does not take youth seriously nor allow them to engage in crucial discussions. In comparison, youth perceive  the older generation as closed-minded and unwilling to act on an issue that will not impact their lives in the same ways.

Generational power imbalances restrict youth participation in their ability to meaningfully contribute to these conversations.^36,37 As mentioned previously, youth tokenism has been an ongoing problem in national and international conversations around climate change. A stronger sense of social trust is necessary on both sides of the generational divide to bridge the gap. This can be built through collaborative efforts against climate change, helping to mitigate negative stereotypes while also creating more positive perceptions.⁸³