Power to the (Young) People? Analysing the role of youth movements and youth voice in local government policymaking on climate and environmental issues

Abstract

Climate change poses a major challenge to traditional policymaking processes. Both mitigation and adaptation necessitate a co-ordinated response from state and non-state actors at all levels, which means that top-down hierarchical approaches are unlikely to be sufficient to address the issue effectively. In addition, because climate impacts will be felt many decades into the future, there is a significant risk of generational injustice if young people are excluded or absent from decision-making processes. Through their involvement in marches, rallies and school strikes organised by movements such as Fridays for Future, and the protest actions of groups like Extinction Rebellion, many young people have expressed their concerns about the climate and demanded significant action from powerholders (Pickard 2019, 2020, 2021). Such activities are targeted at different levels of government, from municipalities to COP26 in Glasgow (Henn, Sloam and Nunes 2021), and have triggered a range of different responses from state actors and the media (Berker and Pollex 2021). Youth climate groups are particularly active at the local level, where they have been influential in the spread of climate emergency declarations (Ruiz-Campillo et al 2021). In addition, although there has recently been much attention on citizen/elite engagement at national and international levels, there is an absence of empirical scholarly evidence about local level interactions between individual ‘non-activist’ young citizens and powerholders concerning the climate emergency. These citizens tend to form the majority within advanced liberal democracies but are less visible than environmental activists. As a consequence, their voices are relatively ‘lesser-heard’ when it comes to local government policymaking processes. We need also therefore to consider how best to articulate youth voice in general within local climate policymaking. This panel will examine the role of youth movements, as well as the place of youth voice more generally, in local climate governance, addressing questions such as: • How do youth climate movements perceive their role in policymaking? Are they primarily ‘outsider’ pressure groups, or are they keen to engage with state actors to develop policy solutions? What objectives do they have, and how confident are they of achieving them? • Which factors might explain any variation in the attitudes of different youth climate groups across national and subnational contexts? • How have local state actors responded to climate movements in different national and subnational contexts? Which factors might affect their approach and attitude? • (How) have local state actors sought to engage with ‘non-activist’ young people in climate issues and how have citizens responded? • (How) have youth climate movements affected policymaking processes in other sectors? Could their activities trigger changes to governance arrangements more widely? • (How) have youth climate movements shaped policy outputs? Which methods (large-N, interviews, ethnography, action research, participant observation, etc.) could we adopt to identify this, and which challenges do they present?

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