New push to engage young people in local climate action

During COP27, ICLEI, a global network of more than 2,500 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development, unveiled its vision to engage more young people around the world in local climate action.

The plan was launched during an event today at the Multilevel Action Pavilion at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt .

Building on its existing work, ICLEI outlined a strategy to further embed the voice of young people in its own activities across all five ICLEI pathways, and to also support the next generation’s role in co-designing local climate action.

“Young people should have a say on crucial strategies such as local climate action plans, through appropriate governance structures and processes,” ICLEI’s Vision on Youth Engagement in Global Climate Action states.

Toolkit

One key method of achieving this will be the creation of a toolkit for young people on how they can reach out to local government officials, and for local governments on how to best engage and involve youth.

“Young people have the need, energy, creativity and motivation to drive change and improve their quality of life in the cities, towns and communities they live, study and work in,” ICLEI’s report says. “It should not be forgotten that they are agents of change, researchers, entrepreneurs, innovators and residents.”

ICLEI has already been involved in work to boost youth participation, including collaborating with YOUNGO, the Youth Constituency of the UNFCCC for children and youth, consisting of many youth-led organisations, groups, delegations, and individuals working in climate change-related fields. ICLEI is also an official partner in the Youth4Climate initiative, launched by the Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition (IMET) and UNDP in May 2022.

City strategies

Several ICLEI members have taken steps to include young people in their climate strategies.

In 2018, youth climate activists gave the City of Olympia in the US a C-minus ‘report card’.

“We had prided ourselves on being a climate-forward city, so we sat with that,” said Cheryl Selby, Mayor of Olympia, during the ICLEI World Congress in Malmö in May. “Then we started working with them to close the gaps between where we were and they wanted us to be. The result was the 2019 Climate Inheritance Resolution.”

Turku in Finland has a Youth Council where young people have the opportunity to take part in meetings of the City Council, the City Board, and municipal committees.

Meanwhile, Tirana in Albania is the European Youth Capital for 2022 and has launched a range of programmes to foster participation.

During the COP27 event, Erion Veliaj, Mayor of Tirana, said it was great to see how COP has evolved from focusing only on national governments to including many other relevant stakeholders, including youth.

“They are the ones with the energy and the passion. Never lose faith in young people,” he said.

“Udaipur Municipal Corporation has already started the implementation of climate mitigation and adaptation measures by engaging youth so that we shall be the last generation seeing these adverse impacts of climate change”.

Work to do

Despite the progress, there is still “a long way to go and much more needs to be done,” ICLEI notes.

It said that a major message shared by university students participating in the ICLEI World Congress in Malmö was that young people are still not meaningfully included in most climate debates. They are often invited very late in the process, if at all, and mainly to play a consultative role, rather than a decision-making role. There is also a risk of “youth-washing” where young people’s presence is more ceremonial than central.

ICLEI now aims to enhance the participation of youth in the activities of local governments through three key pillars: advocacy; knowledge-sharing and capacity development; and governance.

“ICLEI encourages more youth engagement at local levels because we believe that a more systematic integration of youth perspective in the work of local administrators and decision makers is critical to help implement action at scale,”a statement said. “By adding new perspectives from the technical, political, social and cultural angle, this cooperation secures a more democratic, inclusive and creative sustainable future.”