As we celebrate World Environment Day, George Akor looks at how our Generation Hope campaign is supporting children taking action on the climate crisis and inequality in Nigeria and around the world.
All for one, and one for all. The famous rallying cry in Alexandre Dumas’ novel, The Three Musketeers, is one for our times.
The human family is at crossroads. The science is clear, the evidence is overwhelming. We are living through extreme weather events that are increasing in frequency: rising temperatures, warmer oceans, sea levels rising due to melting ice, droughts, increasing rainfall, flooding.
Our planet is in a state of climate emergency. The human family needs to shift into emergency gear. "Life as usual" doesn't work any longer. If we don't want to mess up the planet more, our behaviour, attitudes, and daily practices must change collectively.
Act for all
In tackling the climate crisis, the human family must act to protect every person. And every person – children as well as adults – must act for everyone.
That brings us to our second underlying principle for climate action: agency. Agency speaks to people’s capacity – including children’s capacity – to act and influence matters in their lives. It can be complex and tension-filled, involving other players, power relations and institutional structures. But a sense of agency can lead to action that drives change.
Agency thus plays a key role in climate action efforts. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13) calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Actions can be mitigative – involving the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions – and/or adaptative – preparing for and adjusting to both predicted impacts in the future and current effects of climate change.
Save the Children is one of the organisations that is building on the climate action momentum. We are supporting children to be empowered to take climate action, amplifying their voices, and promoting their leadership. We support marginalised children to be part of the solution and influence leaders. Why? Because children are part of the collective ‘all for one’, and each individual child can act for all.
Children are not passive victims
According to UNICEF, the impact of climate change has inflicted disproportionate suffering on children, and “put almost every child at risk”. Droughts, floods and other climate shocks, in combination with lack of access to food and essential services like water, sanitation, healthcare and education, are experienced by children across the world, including my own country, Nigeria. The climate crisis has magnified poverty, inequality, displacement and even conflict. It threatens children’s education, health, development, survival and future.
Children face greater risks of injury, disability, abuse, trafficking and even death due to the impacts of climate change. They are more vulnerable to rises in malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria that result from the climate crisis. Children in low-income countries and from poor families face the greatest risks because poverty constrains their ability to respond. In northern Nigeria, for example, droughts and extreme temperatures leave many families with lower incomes, less food and clean water, and worsening health. They are pushed into, or further into, poverty. As a result, inequality is entrenched.
The environmentally destructive activities over generations that have led us here have mostly been done by adults. But today’s children are paying the price. And it doesn’t stop there. The climate crisis will have a huge impact on future generations.
Today’s children are not passive victims. They are becoming active agents and a force for transformation. As a springboard to climate action – all for one, and one for all – they have a critical role to help achieve the paradigm shift on climate change we so badly need.
Generation Hope
Save the Children’s Generation Hope campaign puts children and children’s agency at the forefront of climate action. Our global campaign is launched for and with children. Recognising that the climate emergency and inequality are, in the words of one UK child campaigner, “tangled together like a bowl of spaghetti”, we are calling for urgent action on climate change and inequality together.
It is a different kind of campaign. Co-created with children across the world – with research involving more than 50,000 children in 41 countries – Generation Hope aims to:
- amplify children’s voices, ideas, agency and lived experiences of climate change and poverty.
- raise political ambition on tackling the combined crisis of climate change and inequality – through realising children’s rights.
- bring this together so that children’s voices and chidren’s rights are at the centre of efforts to address the climate and inequality crisis.
amplifying children's voices in Nigeria
Between now and 2025, our child rights advocacy clubs, girl champions and children’s parliaments in Nigeria will influence policy implementation and engage national and sub-national governments to protect and increase spending on children. This will include expanding child-sensitive and shock-responsive social protection and essential services and adapting them to climate risk.
At the same time, we’ll support child campaigners to build alliances and networks with adult-led partners so that children’s messages are amplified and are heard by decision makers.
Children lead the charge
The present generation of children are the catalyst needed to reverse environmental degradation and address the effects of climate change.
All over the world children are leading and participating in inspiring climate action. For example, children in the United Kingdom submitted a climate education Bill to parliament – the first-ever Bill written by children – calling for the climate crisis to be taught across the school curriculum. In Nigeria, young people have created a youth manifesto. calling for action on climate change and education. Child campaigners here have also lobbied the federal government of Nigeria to act to tackle the climate emergency.
Combating climate change demands coordinated and concerted government action as well as informed and deliberate efforts by everyone, including children. Our Generation Hope campaign has a critical role to play in reinforcing children’s agency to tackle .
All for one, and one for all.
Photo shows a drawing by a child in Nigeria.
