Children First. Why Youth Activists Are The Only Adults In The Room When It Comes To The Climate Crisis

This contribution is published as part of the UNRISD Think Piece Series, The Time is Now! Why We Need a New Eco-Social Contract for a Just and Green World. We invite experts from academia, advocacy and policy practice to critically explore the various manifestations of our broken social contracts, the root causes of breakdown and the role of rising inequalities, as well as the drivers of positive change. We ask not only which policies and institutional reforms are needed, but also which actors can do what to overcome inequalities and build greater social and climate justice. The series is part of the Global Research and Action Network for a New Eco-Social Contract.

Kumi Naidoo is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy and the former head of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Greenpeace International and Amnesty International. He currently serves as Global Ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity.

Whose future is it anyway? This is the key question that this think piece asks, arguing that young people are the only ones who appreciate the urgency of the climate crisis. Yet politicians and businesses are looking the other way. A new eco-social contract will require system-wide changes to foster inclusion, promote gender equality and deliver environmental justice. So let’s follow the example of our young people and start shifting the balance of power and figuring out new models of practice that recognize the intersections between climate change, inequalities and human rights.

A convergence of crises

It’s plain to see that a plethora of injustices are gripping the world, and that our leaders are struggling. Some of those in positions of power and influence—politicians, business leaders, especially leaders in civil society—seem to be toiling to make the changes needed to avert the looming climate crisis and all that it entails. The conundrum is clear: how do we get across the magnitude and urgency of the situation without overwhelming or demotivating people? How do we inspire action without paralysing people with fear? We are close to a climate cliff edge, and we need to find a way to speak truth to power without creating the impression that action is already futile.

We have all heard the appeals to "save our planet", "save the whales", or "save our environment". The good news is that the earth does not need saving. Our planet has survived near destruction before and probably will again. The oceans, forests, rivers and soil will all restore themselves once human beings are no longer a threat. Human life, on the other hand, is definitely in jeopardy if we continue to destroy our habitat through overconsumption.

This overconsumption is intertwined with an economic system that has spawned a global disease we can call "affluenza". Affluenza is a pathological illness which leads people to believe that a good, decent, meaningful life comes from ever greater material acquisition. In reality, affluenza is compromising the very air, water and food sources we all need to live, depleting finite resources and driving inequalities.

The ecosocial contract and why we need it

A new eco-social contract is vital to delivering greater social and economic justice globally. Such an approach has the potential to press reset on a range of relationships that are becoming ever more unequal—those between state and citizen, between capital and labour, between the global North and South, and between women and men. We should be bold in how we conceive new economic models and transformative social policies. A 21st century eco-social contract will require system-wide changes if it is to foster inclusion, promote gender equality, and deliver environmental justice, and it will enjoy deeper support if it is grounded in open dialogue and work to build consensus. In this regard, I am convinced that the knowledge, wisdom and experiences of Indigenous peoples around the world are critically important to making collective progress.

What is needed from human beings right now is an understanding that the struggle to avert catastrophic climate change is about nothing more or less than securing a future for our children and their children. Too many of our political and business leaders are mismanaging this planet as if no-one is coming after us—essentially playing political poker with the future of our children. This is morally unacceptable, and so it is unsurprising that young people are making their voices heard with such passion and clarity.

In 2019, a complaint was filed with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child by fifteen youth activists aged between 8 and 17 years old from twelve countries. Greta Thunberg and others argued that Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey knew about the risk of climate change for decades but failed to curb their carbon emissions. The young activists claimed that global inaction on climate change constituted a violation of children’s rights. Although the activists’ complaint failed, ultimately, on the grounds of due process (the UN Committee, made up of eighteen independent human rights experts, said that the child activists should have first lodged their complaints in their respective nation states), the Committee did find a "sufficient causal link" between the harm allegedly suffered by children and the omissions of the five states.

Young people at the centre

In my opinion, our youth activists are the only constituency of activism today that genuinely reflects the urgency of the moment. When you look at their language, reasoning, and how they express their understanding of the impact of climate change, the science, and the strategies open to them, they seem rational and realistic, yet those with power dismiss their appeals as impractical and idealistic. However, the recognition of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that climate change is a violation of intergenerational human rights is an important symbolic acknowledgement.

In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that we had twelve years to reduce carbon emissions by as much as half. After a dismal international effort, the IPCC issued an updated report in August 2021. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the new IPCC report was nothing less than "a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable". Yet, just weeks ago at COP26, the main UN forum for follow-up on the Paris Climate Agreement which was held in Glasgow this year, our global leaders once again looked the other way. In his summary of the conference, António Guterres said that the "conference failed to achieve the goals of ending fossil fuel subsidies, phasing out coal, putting a price on carbon, building the resilience of vulnerable communities, and meeting the pledge of $100 billion in climate finance to support developing countries". If we do not act seriously on greenhouse gas emissions very soon, we are likely to cause irreversible damage to the environment and make large tracts of the planet uninhabitable.

The way forward

Today, few people deny the reality of climate change, but there is still a lot of denial regarding the urgency of the timeline. Whilst many leaders pay lip service to addressing climate change, too few are prioritizing the necessary structural and systemic changes required. It is as if there is cognitive dissonance at work. Likewise, many industry tycoons talk a good game on climate change while trying to draw out the negotiation and adaptation processes for as long as there is still profit to be made in oil, gas, coal, mining and other polluting industries. We must remember that nature does not negotiate.

One of the main obstacles to tackling intransigence around climate change is that those controlling dominant industries, including extractives, pharmaceuticals, and the military complex, often own and control governments. We will only see a shift in the balance of power when we see more spirited resistance by ordinary people around the world, using a range of strategies to build momentum, from protest to litigation to civil disobedience. Just as feminists in the civil rights movement made evident the deep connections between race, gender and class in previous decades, nowadays we need to understand how social inequalities intersect with the impacts of the climate crisis, and recognize that the challenges we face on climate and on economic and social justice cannot be resolved in isolation. For civil society, making these connections may mean breaking out of the comfort zone of the silos in which we often work—silos that have often developed to mimic the structures of governmental policy making and practice—but the rewards for doing so will be manifest in greater levels of creativity, synergy and connection to advance our causes, movements and organizations. In this respect, civil society will have an important role in building pressure from below, and in developing new models of practice that recognize the intersections between climate change, inequalities and human rights.

As the climate crisis becomes more acute, and the calls for action from our young people become more urgent, building a new eco-social contract has become a necessary and pressing task that will benefit all of humanity, and the planet.

Photo: Steven Paul Whitsitt, Moms Clean Air Force (Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr)