Spotlight: Young soldiers on the climate front
As the fight against climate change is being led by young activists around the globe, their challenge becomes two-fold: getting elders to change damaging policy decisions, and being taken seriously enough Plant a tree instead of just wishing me on my birthday.” This statement comes from nine-year-old climate activist Licypriya Kangujam based in Manipur. A plainspoken narrative by this young activist has a profound impact as she leads a youth movement in India, urging lawmakers to cap carbon emissions. She doesn’t engage in the contorted language so common in political discourse, choosing blunt words to raise alarm against a concern which countries have to quickly and boldly deal with.\ A school dropout since February 2019, Kangujam received global attention when she addressed the COP25 climate conference in Spain’s Madrid in December 2019. Last June, she raised concern on the issue of climate change. “If they pass the climate change law, we can control carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. It will also give climate justice to millions of poor and vulnerable people who are victims of climate change,” she reportedly said. Greta Thunberg, perhaps the most famous young eco-warrior, is a household name by now. From being in contention for the Nobel Peace Prize last year to drawing comment from US President Donald Trump, Thunberg is just 17 years old. Be it Thunberg, Kangujam, Canada-based Severn Cullis-Suzuki or Uganda-based Vanessa Nakate, it is heartening to see the younger generation march for the planet. They strike from school and walk on streets, holding protests across the globe. Unimpressed by political soundbites, the power of social media helps them to a great extent in provoking action. Like 18-year-old Indonesian-Dutch activist Melati Wijsen, who has founded Bye Bye Plastic Bags to advocate a ban on singleuse plastics. Her beach cleanups, online petitions and international speaking engagements (from the UN to the IMFWorld Bank Group forum) played a role in the government banning single-use plastic in Bali in 2019. Artemisa Xakriabá, a 19-year-old indigenous Brazilian activist, was seven when she joined students from her Xakriabá community to reforest areas near their homeland in Minas Gerais. As representative of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, which protects forests in Brazil, the Amazon Basin, Mesoamerica and Indonesia,she openly talks about the persecution of those fighting to protect the Amazon, their sacred territory. Autumn Peltier, a 15-year-old indigenous Canadian activist, is called a water warrior for her campaign for clean drinking water for all. Jamie Margolin, an 18-year-old climate justice activist from the US, founded Zero Hour in 2017 to amplify young voices in the conversation around climate change. Margolin led the first Youth Climate March in Washington, DC, and in over 20 other cities around the world in 2018. Ayakha Melithafa, a teen activist from Cape Town, was one of 16 to sign a complaint, protesting government inaction on the climate crisis, with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child last September. She’s also a part of the African Climate Alliance and Project 90 by 2030 initiative that’s working for a sustainably developed and equitable lowcarbon economy. Ugandan Vanessa Nakate (23) started activism in December 2018 after becoming concerned about the unusually high temperatures in her country. In early January, she joined around 20 other youth climate activists from around the world to publish a letter to participants at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, calling on companies, banks and governments to immediately stop subsidising fossil fuels. Climate change is an imminent threat, impacting human lives in many ways. As estimated in a landmark UN climate report, unless global greenhouse gas emissions fall by 7.6% each year between 2020 and 2030, we will miss the opportunity to get on track towards the 1.5-degree Celsius temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. “There is undoubtedly a growing ‘personacentric’ movement. Young climate activists have made the dire impacts of climate change a household topic of discussion. Thunberg has received numerous accolades for her climate activism. Her logic is that the future is doomed due to human-induced climate crisis and it is the job of the leaders of the world to safeguard the future. She’s been championing the School Strike for Climate since 2018 hoping that adults will take notice when kids skip school. Many young activists followed suit and globally organised the school climate strike movement in their local communities under the name, Fridays for Future,” says Shazneen Cyrus Gazdar, programme manager, climate change and renewable energy, Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi.