Since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, young climate activists have found new ways to bring attention to climate issues. Among other things, they have developed an online toolkit that both educates adults and facilitates the participation of more children in the social movement.
Daniella Bendo, Christine Goodwin De Faria and Richard C. Mitchell
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared the outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease, covid-19, a pandemic (WHO, 2020). Despite the radical changes brought on by the pandemic, the climate crisis continued to impact countries worldwide. While traditional approaches situate the climate crisis within disciplinary silos such as law, social work, criminology, psychology, sociology, health and anthropology, and although the climate crisis impacts all social demographic groups internationally, it is clear that children and young people are the inheritors of such real-world problems. At the same time, they are key stakeholders in the search for solutions.
Our article, “Post-covid” Childhood-s?: Transdisciplinary Reflections on Participatory Praxis in the Lives of 21st Century Children,” in the International Journal of Children’s Rights, highlights reflections on transdisciplinary epistemologies and methodologies as a way forward for addressing the complexities facing the current generation of children, those who come after, and all those engaged in the field of childhood studies.We highlight that young people should not only be considered as affected populations, but also as highly effective partners in the response to covid-19 and other interconnected global issues, such as the climate crisis (UNICEF, 2020b). While we are cautious of responsibilizing young people’s actions and responses to the climate crisis, it is important to acknowledge the leadership and engagement that young people have carried out on their own terms.
Young climate activists have found new ways to bring attention to climate issues since the pandemic started (UN Women, 2020). The global movement, Fridays for Future, inspired by Swedish high-school student Greta Thunberg, has urged governments and policy makers to take action against global warming by focusing its efforts to an online format (Fridays for Future, 2020). Young people have transformed the climate strike, Fridays for Future, into a social media movement online by developing a toolkit consisting of tips on how to participate in a digital strike, how to mobilize engagement in a digital strike, the importance of digital strikes, and how to raise awareness of issues and probe decision makers to take action at an international level (UNICEF, 2020e). The toolkit provides increased accessibility opportunities for children with disabilities to participate in a social movement, whereas traditional restrictions may prevent young people from physically engaging in social movements for exclusionary reasons (UNICEF, 2020e). While adults may support these efforts, children act as participatory agents. They are educating adults about the importance of taking action to address environmental issues and are acting as experts in their own lives.
At an online, live-streamed Earth Day event on 22 April 2020, Ms Thunberg reminded listeners that covid-19 has opened up opportunities to choose new pathways and pivot to greener policies and investments, such as renewable energy, smart housing and green public procurement (Johnson, 2020; UN ianyd, 2020). Such advancements have the potential to contribute towards sustainable and resilient economies for present and future generations (UN ianyd, 2020).
As noted by UNICEF (2020d), although climate change and the coronavirus are two vastly different challenges, they have commonalities. Both challenges are global, do not respect national boundaries and require countries to collaborate in developing solutions (UNICEF, 2020d). These observations underscore the need for multi-systemic stakeholders in transdisciplinary research, educational and advocacy initiatives to coalesce. As a result of covid-19, the global community has demonstrated its ability to address a crisis, with governments, businesses and individuals taking measures and altering their behaviours. The response to covid-19, therefore, offers lessons on the value of working together, and including children and young people, in order to address the climate crisis.
In September 2019, Ms Thunberg was joined by 600,000 peers in Montréal, Canada, and millions more in over 150 countries through climate strikes (Conley, 2019; Robinson, 2020). While pundits have created online backlash from all corners of the globe, this powerful young woman was recognised by the Nobel Academy with their 2019 nomination. Meanwhile, critics continued to vilify her, often citing her diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome while suggesting her criticisms of education and industrialisation are invalid since she has no comprehensive solutions (Jeanne, 2019).
One of her Canadian contemporaries, 15-year-old Autumn Peltier, provides another example of how young people are challenging the status quo, after she told a 2018 audience at the UN’s General Assembly, ‘We can’t eat money, or drink oil’ (The Canadian Press, 2019). Ms Peltier is from Wikwemikong Unceded Territory who named her Chief Water Commissioner with the Anishanabek Nation, a political advocacy body of 40 First Nations across Ontario, Canada.
We end with a reflective question that may serve as a basis for future research in relation to conceptualizations of childhood and the climate crisis: Why do politicians, corporate leaders and adults in authority continue to ignore young people advocating for changes to how their own societies are organised?
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