"If not even the school listens to us…”: Echos of climate justice on the ground

Abstract

Highlights:

• Youth and other vulnerable groups have limited opportunities to participate in decision-making processes on climate politics.
• Distributive and intergenerational dimensions of climate injustice are particularly present in youth discourses.
• Recognitional and distributional climate injustice is mainly perceived by inland-rural young people.
• More knowledge about climate change at the local level needs to be disseminated.
• Climate justice concept needs further empirical and nuanced exploration with diverse social and political actors.

Purpose: This article brings into debate young people’s meaning-making of climate justice in different geographic regions, and explores the roles of political, social, economic, and education actors in supporting youth’s climate agency in their communities.

Design/methodology/approach: After selecting two schools located in Northern Portugal – in countryside/rural and in coastal/urban contexts – we conducted two focus group discussions with young students (aged between 16 and 18) and sixteen interviews with local stakeholders (policy-makers, economic agents, activists, and scientists). We performed content analysis, using climate justice’s dimensions as analytical axes.

Findings: The data analysis reveals that young people do not feel heard in schools or in policy-making processes on climate. In contrast, adults unanimously recognize the importance of having more youth voices but fail to identify opportunities for youth participation in local climate policymaking. In addition to procedural and intergenerational dimensions, issues of recognitional and distributional climate injustice are identified by youngsters in their regions.