This story was originally published by Grinding and appears here as part of the Climatic desk collaboration.
For generations, young people have signed their names in the accounting books of history as agents of change. James Monroe and Alexander Hamilton celebrated their 25th birthdays during the Revolutionary War. Nearly two centuries later, college-age black men and women mobilized for rights they had been denied since the founding of the nation. Today’s young people have taken up the baton passed to them by their elders. They have raised their voices in urgent anger to demand action for the decisive issue of their lives: the climate emergency.
However, only a few governments, at any level and in any country, have responded to their demands for action. To help address this, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the nonprofit funded by former New York mayor and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, has launched the Youth Climate Action Fund. Its intention is to help 100 cities around the world better incorporate the voices and visions of young people into the way they imagine and enact policy.
“We want to help bring increasingly powerful voices to climate activism,” said James Anderson, who directs government philanthropy innovation programs and helped design the fund. “And we also want to make sure and help local governments invite everyone who wants to make a difference in their city on climate to participate in the effort in ways that are meaningful to them.”
The funds it has given to cities in 38 countries on six continents should allow for precisely that kind of participation. With the announcement, each city will receive an initial disbursement of $50,000. If any mayor responds with appropriate urgency and commits money within six months to programs or projects that engage youth leadership in local climate action, their city will receive an additional $100,000 to further support youth-led efforts.
When typical funding announcements for climate efforts often reach into the millions and thousands of millions or even hundreds of billions, a five or six figure payment may seem insignificant. However, it can have a huge impact, especially in the cities and countries that need it most.
“I am in shock. “I am surprised, but in a good way, because that money is a lot, especially here in Zimbabwe, and I think a lot of wonderful things could be done in our city,” said Nozinhle Gumede, a 21-year-old. Climate activist from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Bulawayo, a city of 1.2 million people in the southwest of the country, is among those selected for the Youth Climate Action Fund. Gumede hopes the money will be used to support youth-led organizations that actively help local communities adapt to climate change and build capacity at the city level for youth to advise the mayor.
“We are the custodians of the future,” Gumede said. “So I think we have a right to be part of some kind of advisory or leadership council to see how this money shapes our future.”
Several cities have already sought to establish climate councils made up of young people to ensure they can help shape the plans and policies that will define the boundaries of their futures.
Bloomberg Philanthropies funds youth-led climate action in 100 cities around the world. #Climate Emergency #Youth Climate Action Fund #Climate Activism #Climate Resilience
Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, has made climate resilience a key priority of her work leading the country’s capital and largest city, which was also selected for the Youth Climate Action Fund. She has also made it her goal to focus young people on her work. “We work with the saying: ‘nothing for me without me,’” she said, so “when in your city 70 percent of the population is under 35 years old, nothing is done without young people. “
To further cement the essential status of youth participation in the fabric of the city, Aki-Sawyerr hopes to launch a youth climate council later this year to provide a structured and ongoing forum for engaging youth. This advice will also help inform and shape how The Freetown Climate Action Strategy it develops.
In cities like Freetown and Bulawayo, climate action is different from what cities in the United States and Europe care about. When she met with the local Freetown chapter of Fridays for Future, the organization founded by Greta Thunberg to spread their Friday school strikes to other cities and countries, forced Aki-Sawyerr to realize “how different our situations are and that there should be no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to youth movements.” In Freetown, “nobody cares if you go to school,” she said. “You don’t even have enough school time. “You don’t have enough contact with teachers.”
Additionally, many young people in Freetown face myriad immediate concerns, from food insecurity to forced marriages. “In the midst of all of that,” Aki-Sawyerr said, “their lives are being significantly negatively impacted by climate change.” However, they reap none of the benefits that those in the Global North have accrued by polluting the planet and exposing previously colonized countries to grave dangers. “You don’t receive the light. You don’t understand Broadway. You don’t get fancy cars,” Aki-Sawyerr said. “But you can see the impact of the emissions that result from all that.”
As a result, their focus is not on mitigating a problem they did not cause, but on adapting to it. Freetown has already faced tragedies that climate change may make more common. In 2017, days of torrential rain caused a landslide that killed more than 1,000 people. Such precipitation is expected become more common in places like Freetown. And in Bulawayo, Gumede said the biggest concern is the extreme heat, something Residents already struggle with.
As these cities and others across the Global South seek to strengthen their resilience to climate change, young people in the Global North face a daunting task: put more pressure on polluters. By leveraging the resources of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Youth Climate Action Fund, cities in developed countries must learn to channel the energy and ambitions of young people to accelerate their actions to eliminate emissions.
Several young climate organizers in the United States spoke about the drive and vision they and their peers bring to this work. Holly Swiglo, a freshman at Oberlin College in Ohio who helps lead the college’s chapter of the Sunrise Movement, said young people who see their future defined by a worsening climate crisis are unwilling to let the burdens of bureaucracy obstruct the pace and scale of change. who believe that it is not only possible but necessary. For cities and mayors to harness that energy, they cannot limit themselves to offering performative actions of alliance. Kristy Drutman, a New Jersey-based climate activist and communicator who serves on the EPA’s youth advisory council, said such empty actions leave young people frustrated and disillusioned. But cities like Mesa, Arizona, are a testament to how mayors and city council members can take their role as public servants seriously.
The city’s Republican Mayor John Giles has listened to his constituents’ climate concerns since shortly after taking office, when local climate activists asked him about his plans for the city’s climate agenda. The climate action plan that Mesa later developed contains the typical bullet points (carbon neutrality, renewable energy and waste reduction goals), but includes a fourth pillar that Giles sees as critical to achieving the others: community engagement. Mesa residents have already shaped the city’s approach to climate action, including their proposal to the Youth Climate Action Fund, which emerged directly from their Hacktivate Mesa Program which gives high school students the opportunity to understand the problems facing their communities and devise solutions.
These initiatives provide an outlet for the pent-up energy and anger of a generation desperate for action. The Youth Climate Fund hopes to encourage many more like them. These efforts are necessary, because today’s activists have made it clear in many ways that they have heeded the lessons of those who came before and will do whatever it takes to bring about the change they wish to see.