What are youth climate activists’ hopes for the Decade and beyond?

This episode is now available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Amazon Music.

Today’s world is the home of the largest generation of youth in history. Organizing climate strikes, delivering powerful speeches, leading restoration projects and pioneering innovative technologies – today’s world has a generation of youth determined to defend the Earth.

In this GLF Live, hear from three environmental activists around the world discussing their experience in the global environmental arena: Fatou Jeng, Paloma Costa and Ridhima Pandey. From what sparked their fire to what keeps them going, and from mental health and environmental anxiety to finding power and strength in their communities, the activists will delve into their differences and commonalities, while envisioning a path for the years to come.

Listen back to the conversation:

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Fatou Jeng is the founder of Clean Earth Gambia, a youth-led NGO focused on gender, climate change, conservation, and environmental awareness. She also serves as the Policy Operations lead for Women and Gender in the UNFCCC Youth Constituency (YOUNGO), where she has been leading policy submissions on gender and climate change since COP23. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in environment, development and policy at the University of Sussex, as a Chevening scholar. Fatou has trained over 500 school children on climate change, and provided training to communities, youth and youth organizations on pressing environment challenges. She was recently listed as one of the Top 100 Young African Conservation Leaders in 2021 by a collection of international NGOs including WWF, the World Scout Movement, the African Alliance of YMCAs and the African Wildlife Fund. Read more about Fatou on Landscape News.

Ridhima Pandey is an environmental activist from India who advocates for action against climate change. When she was 9 years old, she filed a suit against the Indian government for not taking enough steps to combat climate change. She was also one of the complainants to the UN, along with several other young climate activists, against several nations’ failure to take action against the climate crisis. In 2020, Rhidima was listed as one of BBC’s top 100 most empowering women. Read more about Ridhima on Landscape News.

Paloma Costa is a young climate-activist from Brazil. She is an advisor at Instituto Socioambiental, on social-environmental rights, including Indigenous and traditional peoples, responsible for bringing the youth perspective to the organization. From 2018 to 2020, in the youth-led organization Engajamundo, she coordinated the Working Group of Climate and the youth delegations to COP24, COP25, UN LAC Climate-Week and #AmazonCenteroftheWorld. As a member of Abu Dhabi Youth Voices, she supported the UN Youth Envoy’s Officer on the delivery of the Youth Climate Summit. She is part of several networks and co-founded #FreeTheFuture movement and Ciclimáticos. During the pandemic, she has been personally supporting Indigenous youth initiatives, awareness and meaningful participation in processes. Alongside with the UN Secretary-General, she participated in the opening of the Climate Action Summit and represented NGOs on the 43rd session of the UN Humans Rights Council. Recently, she was appointed to be part of the UN SG’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Changes.