Climate Change Projects and Youth Engagement: Empowerment and Contested Knowledge

Abstract

This study investigated youth’s empowerment through EU-funded climate change projects (CCPs) and the role that social research and public engagement play in that process. The importance of considering youth empowerment in a time of climate change is increasingly recognized. Youth are exposed to interrelated health, socioeconomic, and political vulnerabilities caused by climate change, but they often lack resources to address and navigate these changes. To help address these issues, youth empowerment holds the potential to give youth a greater influence over their lives in the context of an evolving climate. EU-funded CCPs play a crucial role in EU’s climate mitigation and adaptation policies, and the implementation of these projects can have widespread implications for youth across the EU. However, there is little research exploring the local youth implications of EU-funded CCPs. In this paper, we want to start addressing this knowledge gap by exploring how youth empowerment was facilitated, shaped, and restrained over a year-long collaboration with students from a Greek school as part of a Horizon 2020 project on the social acceptance of Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCUS) technologies. The findings indicate that the activities provided the students with opportunities to explore and express different types of concerns, knowledge, and perspectives on issues related to climate change, social acceptance, and CCUS. However, the empowering potential of these activities was also shaped by power differentials and contestations around the validity of different knowledge sources. For meaningful youth engagement through Horizon 2020 initiatives, more longitudinal and meaningful participation is needed.

1. Introduction

Climate change is one of the most prominent and multidimensional challenges that humanity is currently facing. As a result, climate change impacts give rise to social inequalities with disproportional impacts to different groups of people [1,2]. Thomas, et al. [2] refer to that disproportion as a “differential vulnerability”, with social and economic factors being the key factors determining the vulnerability spectrum. The pertinent literature suggests that youth’s differential vulnerability is evidenced in their mental and physical health and is interlinked with other social, economic, and political inequalities [3,4,5], with youth of the Global South being more exposed to climate change vulnerabilities [6]. In this study, we adopt UN’s definition of “youth” as the population aged between 15 and 24 years old [7]. To further aggravate these differential vulnerabilities, youth’s political disengagement and lack of participation [8] may result in limited capabilities to influence the political, economic, and social dynamics that create the conditions for climate change and that inform how climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives are carried out.

The notion of youth empowerment is one approach that is increasingly being used to try and address the differential climate change vulnerabilities that youth are currently experiencing. Before expanding into youth empowerment, it is important to define how empowerment is used in this paper. There are many definitions about empowerment and ideas of what empowerment should be able to achieve. This paper looks at two separate dimensions of empowerment which are “relevance” and “power” [9]. According to Cattaneo, et al. [9], an important tenet of empowerment is being able to specify the relevance of an intervention’s goals to the targeted group of people, while also addressing power inequalities.

Youth empowerment has the potential to enable youth to gain greater influence over their own education, personal growth, and wellbeing and to give greater opportunities for youth to instigate social and political transformations [10]. The importance of youth empowerment in relation to climate change is also recognized by the EU with a number of EU policies and initiatives having been initiated to support youth empowerment for climate change [11]. Furthermore, the E.U. emphasizes the role that young people should play in shaping democracy through political participation and active engagement in the commons; however, a recent study conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that there is a lack of active participation from youth in the political scene [12]. Whilst youth empowerment for climate change is thus promoted by the EU, we still have very little knowledge about how the EU’s own climate change projects, such as its flagship Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program, impact youth empowerment issues.

To start addressing this knowledge gap, this paper will examine the impacts on youth empowerment of an EU-funded Horizon 2020 project. The purpose of this international E.U.-funded project is to develop innovative and sustainable solutions for carbon capture, utilization, and storage, while exploring their societal dimensions, including social acceptance and awareness of CCUS technologies. Drawing on a year-long school collaboration, we will explore how the EU-project activities enabled the students to express and be exposed to a variety of different ways of making sense of climate change, but we will also discuss the implications and manifestations arising from the power imbalance between the students, the institutional educational settings, and the researchers. In the following sections, we will first review the literature on how youth are exposed to particular patterns of differential vulnerability. Then we will explore the importance of youth empowerment in instigating change that can address the differential vulnerabilities that the youth is experiencing in relation to climate change. Finally, we will examine how the relationship between knowledge, power, and education can inform our understandings of empowerment in relation to climate change initiatives.

1.1. Background

1.1.1. Climate Change and Differential Vulnerabilities of Youth

Despite everyone having an environmental impact through their actions [13], youth are often disproportionally affected by environmental degradation due to their lower contribution to environmental issues [14,15]. Several scholars and organizations have highlighted the vulnerabilities that youth are currently facing due to climate change and how they differ from older populations. The impacts of climate change on the mental health of youth have been reported as a global phenomenon, with one study indicating that 45% of the study’s respondents (aged between 16 and 25 years old) reported that their feelings towards climate change have negative effects on their daily lives [16,17]. The environmental, economic, and social damages caused by climate change can also exacerbate and interlink with gendered, social, economic, and political vulnerabilities that youth are already experiencing. The complex and interlinked factors can have a range of consequences for youth, including increased levels of forced migration, decreased school attendance, and increasing levels of domestic violence, as well as the decreased desire of having children [5,18].

1.1.2. Climate Change and Youth Empowerment

Youth empowerment can be seen as an important tool to help address the differential vulnerabilities that youth experience in connection to climate change. Youth across the globe have themselves sought to change the politics around climate change by increasingly initiating climate-related actions, protests, and initiatives [19,20].

Within a European context, the “Fridays for Future” movement has been initiated by school students as an attempt for the younger generations to be part of the public discussion regarding climate change, with the current support of “Scientists for Future” [21,22].

Fridays for Future is one of the avenues that the youth are using to express their disapproval of current climate change policies by questioning pertinent political decisions [23].

From an institutional perspective, international organizations such as the UN and the EU have established initiatives to support youth engagement and empowerment in climate change. The United Nations has established the Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) initiative. The focus of ACE is on climate change education and public awareness, training, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation [24]. The EU, from their side, have initiated the “Youth for Climate Action” program to involve youth in climate change decision-making [25].

To facilitate youth empowerment, it is important that youth are politically active, are partners in the co-construction of knowledge, and are active in civic engagement [26,27].

Despite the existence of initiatives such as youth councils, those initiatives have been critiqued for trying to prepare youth for adult-like institutions, and they have been primarily designed for socializing the youth and being elitist by excluding some of them [28,29].

Despite the diversity in youth empowerment approaches, there is a common focus on how people and social groups can better control and gain power over their lives [10]. What empowerment looks like is inherently contextually situated and cannot be easily measured across different social contexts [30]. We can therefore have different dimensions of youth empowerment that, depending on the social context, can take different levels of importance. According to Martínez, et al. [10], those dimensions can be summarized as (1) personal growth and wellbeing, (2) relational, (3) educational, (4) political, (5) transformative, and (6) emancipative.

As the students’ engagement activities took place in an educational setting, in this study, we focus on the educational dimension, although we also recognize that this, at particular times, can interlink with other dimensions of empowerment.

1.2. Education and Empowerment

Academically and politically, it has been recognized that education can enable empowerment. Education for empowerment has been promoted on a policy level by institutions such as the United Nations, as a tool to enable more inclusive and equitable quality education for all [31]. There is a range of initiatives that seek to use education as a tool to empower different groups of people, including women, youth, and refugees [32,33,34].

Academically, Dewey, Teixeira, and Freire were some of the pioneers of exploring the empowering potentials of education by considering how to democratize education by being free, inclusive, and critically provoking [35,36,37]. Dewey argued that teachers and students should be on an equal level, and their relationship should be reciprocal and not a one-way relationship where the teacher possesses all the knowledge and just transfers it to their students [38]. Based on Dewey’s educational philosophy, it is important that students are exposed to hands-on educational activities, allowing them to learn the local context through community engagement while being part of a political and economic culture [39]. In his book “Pedagogy of the oppressed”, Freire [40] discusses the importance of education as an instrument of critical thinking by providing students with knowledge, skills, and social relations to become critical citizens. For Freire, pedagogy was not a political indoctrination but rather a political practice that facilitated critical thinking [35,41].

Education approaches for empowerment have also been used in education on sustainability issues like climate change. In his paper, Reigota [42] discusses how Freire’s ideas on a participatory and politically based education have impacted environmental education around the globe, while Spínola [43] argues for liberation from environmental oppressions (i.e., norms, beliefs, and values) through cultural transformations. In the context of education for sustainability, one of the main concerns is to empower students to become critical and informed citizens and act upon those socioecological intersections through sometimes alternative education formats [44,45]. Empowerment approaches to sustainable education can thus enable transformative learning experiences that give students the necessary space for constructive discussions and develop their critical thinking skills [32]. Furthermore, studies have shown how empowerment approaches to sustainable education can improve students’ awareness of the socio-scientific dimensions of climate change while improving the student’s argumentation skills [46].

Whilst empowerment approaches to sustainable education have the potential to develop students’ critical citizenship skills, research has highlighted the complex role that knowledge and power can play in these initiatives [47,48]. Knowledge is deeply entangled with issues of power, i.e., who produces, uses, and has agency over knowledge. In his book, Veyne [49] discusses Foucault’s views on knowledge and power, as well as his criticism on the paradigm that knowledge must conform to the limitations institutionalized by university research, or else it risks misrepresenting the truth. Influenced by Freire’s ideas on pedagogy, Bingham [50] discusses the role of authority amongst teachers and students, and how authority should not be treated as a possession, but rather as a relation where two or more parties have different roles.

However, knowledge can also be used to enable marginalized groups to challenge powerful social groups and institutions. Knowledge can be a means for public participation in public debates and facilitates influence in decision-making processes [51]. In relation to knowledge authority, Gaventa and Cornwall [51] have suggested that empowerment through knowledge creation can provide the necessary authority for the lay people to challenge the expert’s paradigm and provide an inclusive and diverse voice in the knowledge production process.

These complexities around the intersection of power and knowledge are furthermore complicated when it comes to complex and multidimensional environmental issues like climate change. Some scholars argue that it is important to empower people by equipping them with the knowledge that can address misconceptions and alternative conceptions about climate change. They consider alternative conceptions to refer to understandings of a concept that is not aligned with scientific evidence or scientific ideas [52,53]. In an educational setting, these alternative conceptions can be found amongst students, their teachers, and in the scientific textbooks they are using [54,55]. However, some scholars point out that scientific evidence and ideas are just one form of knowledge, and that other knowledge systems and perspectives are necessary to address climate change. For example, increasingly, scholars have been advocating for the incorporation of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in environmental research [56,57]. According to Stori, et al. [58], “TEK refers to a cumulative body of knowledge, practices, institutions, and beliefs, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission (tradition)” p.2. Such cultural transmissions include cultural festivals and oral traditions that allow the transfer of knowledge from one generation to another while often socially empowering the local communities on natural resource management [59]. Thus, it is necessary that more diverse voices are included in decision-making for climate change issues.

1.3. Educational Gamification

Play is an essential element of people’s lives defining cultures and facilitating behavioral changes [60,61]. As suggested by several scholars, the versatility of gamification is a powerful tool that can be used within education settings, as, amongst others, it sparks curiosity, increases learner’s intrinsic motivation, has an interactive element, and allows the player/learner to see the immediate results of their decisions [62,63,64]. Additionally, gamification encourages students to make their own choices, thus considering their individualities, which is a vital element in any educational setting [65,66]. Similarly to empowerment, there is not an agreed definition on gamification within an education setting, but it is a context-dependent activity that meets certain criteria such as behavioral changes and taking place in a nongame environment [67,68].

The research question we aim to answer is whether it is possible to utilize resources from an E.U.-funded climate change project to enable educational activities aiming to empower students in relation to climate change and CCUS. To explore that, we initiated a collaboration with school students in Greece, which we report on.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Context

To develop methods that could empower youth, an emergent approach was taken, with methods shaping through our collaboration with the students and their teachers. This emergent approach was also essential because as social scientists in a Horizon 2020 project, we often found that our position in the project was very fluid. Although our primary role was that of a researcher, we often found ourselves wearing a different “hat” or being perceived as wearing different “hats” from the local communities and the project members, such as being educators and communicators. Such an example is the fact that despite having a communication team within the project, the authors of this paper were the first ones to inform the local communities about the project that was taking place in their areas, thus having to wear a communicator’s “hat” instead of a researcher’s one. That fluidity of roles had the advantage of a more immersive methodology but with the boundaries of being a researcher, an educator, and a communicator being blurred. Because of that, we had to fluctuate and balance our positionality between observers and activists, and that will become evident in this paper within the “Engagement Process” Section below. Research has indicated the complexity of developing youth empowerment initiatives within particular cultural and institutional educational settings that can be characterized by power differentials between students and teachers, institutional regulations, cultural norms, and limited flexibility to change the curriculum [69,70]. The methods deployed were therefore dependent on our ongoing interactions with the school and the students. As one of the industrial partners of the project and host of a CCUS pilot project is located in an area in northern Greece, one of the researchers who speaks the language spent an extended amount of time in the area for his fieldwork. During his stay in the area, he contacted the local middle school principal, suggesting a collaboration between the school and the project.

To further contextualize this study, Greece underwent a financial crisis that began in 2009 with the consequences still being evident within the Greek society. As discussed in the introduction, the youth are disproportionately impacted by such sociopolitical events, and the Greek youth are now being asked to navigate a very unstable and precarious sociopolitical arena [71,72]. Greece, as part of the European Union, has emphasized the importance of green transition towards a Net Zero future to bolster the country’s financial status while also addressing climate change and other environmental issues [73], but youth in rural areas are often found in disadvantaged positions with this transition [74].

The purpose of the collaboration and the research study was twofold. First was to understand what school students knew about CCUS and what they thought their role was in decarbonizing societies, and secondly, to expose students to educational activities that could bolster their critical thinking skills and empower them to build capabilities to address the technological developments in their area.

After receiving the necessary ethical approvals from the university and the school principal’s consent, the researcher had an initial meeting with a group of students at the school grounds to inform them about the overall project and the research study. The researchers also received assent forms from the students and consent forms from their parents that wanted to be part of this research study. In addition, to safeguard participants, the researchers of the project are members of the Protection of Vulnerable Group (PVG) scheme in Scotland.

Due to the project funding’s focus on CCUS technologies and perceptions, the emphasis of this school collaboration was on CCUS, climate change, and students’ perceptions. Due to the particularities of the project, such as collaborating with students of an area to which we did not have prior access and being constrained by time, we followed an emergent approach that allowed for fluidity and flexibility in the development of this project’s methods [75].

During the evolution of this collaboration, it became evident that students were not familiar with CCUS technologies, so asking any questions about their beliefs and perceptions about them would not have been appropriate. Instead, the activities were designed to expand students’ knowledge of climate change and CCUS, while understanding their perceptions on climate change and strategies for addressing it. The culmination of the collaboration included discussions on CCUS and climate change, as well as a visit to a science museum and participating in a role-playing game. At a later stage, we wanted to explore the potential of students’ empowerment through those activities and the role that different knowledge systems play in shaping their perceptions of CCUS and climate change.

The school we collaborated with is in a semi-rural area of Greece, and the region is active in both the agricultural and tourism sector. It has a population of approximately 10,000 people and the town where the school is situated is the hub for the civil services of the region. Due to the semi-rural characteristics of the region, the school serves students not just from the town where it is located, but from nearby villages as well.

The students formed a study group of 15 students aged 15–16 years old, all of whom were in the same school year, and we collaborated through the whole academic year in order to have a more longitudinal understanding of the topic. The school principal, together with the lead teacher, made the selection of the students. The researchers, other than deciding the number of students that would form the group, had no influence on the selection of the students. The number of students was deemed the most appropriate by the researchers from a resource perspective. From a school perspective, students were selected based on their interest in the topic and their year-long commitment to the study group.

Below is a description of the different types of engagement we had with the students together with the objectives of those engagements. All engagement activities were attended by the same group of students.

2.2. Engagement Process

2.2.1. PowerPoint Presentation

The first interaction with the students was through a PowerPoint presentation that one of the researchers shared with the students in the school’s assembly hall. The purpose of this presentation was to inform the students about the EU project and discuss with them the idea of collaborating in a research study. Despite going with an open agenda on how to collaborate with the students, the lack of time, in combination with the rigidity of the Greek education system, meant that it was up to the researchers to suggest the activities that students could engage with. Both the principal of the school and the teacher leading this potential collaboration were present throughout this presentation. The project’s CCUS video was also presented in this session. This presentation was attended by a cohort of approximately 40 students. No data were collected in that instance.

2.2.2. PlayDecide Card Game

Once the study group was formed, a few days after the PowerPoint presentation, one of the researchers met again with the students to participate in a PlayDecide conversation game. PlayDecide is an open access serious game that promotes discussion while sharing information for controversial issues in a simple and effective way [76,77]. The PlayDecide conversation game has been used by several researchers and educators in different disciplines to both provide information on a topic as well as elicit discussions amongst participants [78,79]. The PlayDecide conversation game we used for this study is titled “Climate Change”, and it is an open-source educational resource provided through the EU PlayDecide portal [80]. A sample of the students’ card choices can be seen in Appendix A. The PlayDecide game lasted for 90 min, and the discussions throughout the game were audio-recorded after receiving participants’ consent. The objective of this engagement activity was to establish a baseline of what climate change is amongst the students, while discussing their perspectives and identifying potential gaps in their current knowledge on climate change. The game was played in the English language and not in the students’ native language, as they all felt comfortable with their level of English, and the principal wanted to use it as an activity for their English language course as well. During this engagement activity, the researcher was both a facilitator of the game and a researcher.

2.2.3. Science Museum Educational Visit

After discussions with the students, the teacher leading this activity and the principal of the school, it was decided that students would benefit from a visit to a regional science museum to learn more about CCUS technologies and climate change. Initially, the researchers requested from the science museum a tailored program on CCUS technologies for the students to attend, but such a program was not available at the science museum, as the education team of the museum were not aware of those technologies. Instead, the education director suggested an activity called “Gone with the Wind”. The purpose of this activity is for students to be exposed to a role-playing game (RPG) focusing on the social acceptance dimension of renewable energy and more specifically the development of a windfarm in a fictitious rural area of Greece. The researchers of this paper did not have any involvement in the development of this RPG, and it was facilitated by the education team at the science museum. The role of the researcher was to only collect data during this engagement activity. Due to the participatory element of this project, and the museum’s staff expertise, there was a mutual agreement between the school, the researchers, and the museum to continue with this RPG activity. Several studies using RPGs in school settings suggest that students participating in such activities can benefit from developing their critical thinking skills, encouraging collaboration, and increasing their learning motivation [81,82]. The RPG was conducted in the Greek language.

Students were organized in teams, and each team was given a role that they had to impersonate, e.g., a farmer, a local resident, a shop owner, etc. Each team was provided with an electronic tablet that contained all the information they needed about their specific role; based on that information, they were asked to contribute to the discussion. At a later stage, more information was provided by the facilitator through the tablet to enhance the discussion. The information provided to the students included a publication by the environmental organization “Greenpeace” that supported the use of wind energy, a report by the “European Platform Against Windfarms” that highlighted the negative impacts of windfarms and thus opposed the development of windfarms, and an Environmental Impact Assessment from a consultancy company. Appendix B demonstrates some of the documents used in this RPG. Similarly to the PlayDecide card game, the RPG conversation was audio-recorded.

2.3. Ethics Statement

This study has received ethical approval from the Research and Ethics Committee at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen Business School.

2.4. Data Analysis

Data was collected in two separate but interlinked engagement activities: (1) PlayDecide game and (2) Science Museum educational visit.

Data from the PlayDecide game and the Science Museum educational visit include the students’ conversations that were audio-recorded, as well as their notes during the activities. The audio-recordings were initially transcribed in the Greek language, and the Greek text was subsequently translated into the English language. The English text was then imported in NVivo 20, a qualitative analysis software, and thematic analysis followed [83].

Thematic analysis was used as it offers a flexible approach to developing codes and themes, and due to the different sources of data, a flexible approach was deemed as the most appropriate method for this study [84]. We followed the six phases of thematic analysis according to [85], starting by familiarizing and immersing ourselves in the data by multiple reading cycles and identifying preliminary codes. We then started putting together the themes as an iterative process with feedback from this paper’s authors. The final themes were then reviewed and agreed upon by all authors of the paper. Codes were developed using a hybrid approach, with deductive codes being predetermined from the pertinent literature and inductive coding emerging from the text [86].

Through the analysis of the three separate education activities, we looked for evidence that provoked critical thinking in relation to climate change and their perceptions of CCUS. We also looked at how the structure of the activities promoted or demoted different types of knowledge and the role of the facilitators in that exercise.

2.5. Limitations

This study was conducted with a group of students living in a rural area, and it would be beneficial to replicate this study with a cohort of students from an urban environment. One limitation of the study was that although the research and the engagement activities were conducted face to face, the researchers lived abroad and that limited the amount of time and number of interactions they could have with the students. We acknowledge that not using the students’ native language could have prevented some students that are not comfortable with the English language from participating, and that could result in a selection bias in our recruitment strategy.

We also acknowledge that as authors of this manuscript, we also adhere to our own epistemologies, and that can influence our understanding of the engagement activities, e.g., the role of the facilitators.

Although students participated in the RPG, their responses do not necessarily reflect their own beliefs. Due to a tragic train accident that took place in Greece killing 57 people, it was decided as a sign of respect to not conduct the fourth and final engagement activity as it coincided with the national mourning period.

3. Results

Below, we present the results of the activities that the researchers collected data on.

3.1. PlayDecide Card Game

The thematic analysis of the discussions during the card game gave rise to three themes that are relevant to the analysis of this paper. Those themes are (1) Uncertainties and Alternative conceptions, (2) Complexities, and (3) Concerns. There were several interlinks amongst these three themes as described below, and each theme cannot be considered exclusive.

3.1.1. Uncertainties and Alternative Conceptions

Despite the students having a good understanding of what climate change is, there were still some uncertainties and misconceptions discussed during the activity. One of the students was hesitant about whether she was describing climate change or global warming:

“Where we create… global warming… climate change”.

[S5]

This was followed by a discussion about the existence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the past 200 years. The same student had the belief that greenhouse gases are the ones that are found within the agriculture greenhouses, and those gases are the problem:

“Which means that the gases that exist in greenhouses are present in the atmosphere”.

[S5]

In terms of energy production, one of the students mentioned a new discovery by Chinese scientists who discovered a new mineral on the moon:

“Well, I read, I saw a video somewhere anyway, some people from China went to the moon, and they dug inside the moon, and they found a fuel that is much smaller, covers much more energy, produces energy and if they bring it, they intend to bring this to earth and use it”.

[S3]

There were several unknowns in relation to the above statement including the following:

“One gram I think they said covers New York (energy needs); I think for two months”.

[S3]

3.1.2. Complexities

Students recognized that solving climate change is not an easy task. They are aware of several complexities associated with addressing climate change. Below is an excerpt of the students’ discussion concerning the installation of photovoltaics in the Sahara Desert:

“The biggest desert is the Sahara. So, this is barren land, no one steps on it right? The sun shines there 24/7, if you fill this with photovoltaics won’t you power all of Greece?”

[S1]

“You will extract (the energy) but the grid will not be able to pick up all that energy from a certain point”.

[S2]

“The only problem is who has the cash”.

[S4]

“Also, if the Sahara is filled with photovoltaics, the life that exists in the Sahara will also decrease”.

[S2]

Another complexity was identified in relation to the mineral discovered by the Chinese. Despite the other students not being familiar with that mineral, they were skeptical and critical of its application:

“I believe that this moon is not such a good idea, because sending rockets into space is not the most ecological (sustainable) thing. By the time the rockets arrive, come out of the atmosphere, the carbon dioxide they release is very large amounts, so imagine one rocket going off every month”.

[S1]

“Hey people, it is how we consume first and then look at the moon and the rest”.

[S7]

3.1.3. Concerns

Students were concerned about their role in society, while also recognizing that they need to be the agents of change that they seek. One of the students, in a joking manner, expressed concern about his life expectancy when discussing carbon dioxide emission targets:

“The fact that we have already adapted to climate change and, of course, the damage has been done, it is very difficult to completely remove carbon dioxide from our lives. I mean, I had seen somewhere, I had read that by 2050 we have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero to stop climate change, which is not going to happen, so adapting is the best thing”.

[S1]

“Will we reach fifty years of age”?

[S5]

There were concerns that politicians do not necessarily have the public’s interests as a priority, but they are more concerned about their own benefits:

“Most politicians look out for their own interests”.

[S8]

“… no matter how many photovoltaics we put in, no matter how much money we give, no matter what we do, they (politicians) will find another way to spend money again and be in their own interest. So, I think the best thing would be to discuss with a large group of people who have a lot of influence, if we are a very large group of people, we can make a change”.

[S5]

3.2. Science Museum Educational Visit

The RPG data were analyzed as a resource and tool for the empowerment of students in decision-making. The thematic analysis gave rise to three separate themes: (1) Facilitation dynamics, (2) Expertise, and (3) Public participation. The “Concerns” theme was also present in the PlayDecide card game.

3.2.1. Facilitation Dynamics

During the role-playing game, the instructor impersonated the role of the local mayor in the game, but they would often break character when they wanted to make a point on a topic; they had strong opinions as a real person rather than as an RPG player. Below is an excerpt where the facilitator defended nuclear energy as the safest option for energy production:

“Nuclear is the safest, most reliable, clean and cheap source from which we can get electricity and energy in general… Nuclear is the most ecological source of energy, but we don’t use it. Wind turbines are a very safe source of energy, not so efficient and take up a lot of space. Hydroelectric is a lousy source of energy”.

[F]

It was also evident that the power dynamics in the discussion were in favor of the facilitator, as they often interrupted the students and suggested what they wanted to say; they had control of the conversation flow:

“I want to ask, because the house we live in and the plot will be expropriated, with the fee we will get…

[S]

… will the expropriation be fair? Isn’t that what you want to say?

[F]

Other than that, will there be other land available that is not affected by the wind farm?”

[S]

3.2.2. Expertise

Part of the RPG involved discussing the role that different stakeholders might play in the suggested scenario of a wind turbine project development. Regarding expertise, the facilitator, both in their role as a mayor but also in real life, held the opinion that expertise is directly linked to scientists and engineers, and that only experts’ opinions should be considered when deciding on issues such as the societal and environmental impacts of wind turbines:

“The engineer’s study will tell you that if is managed correctly, because Greenpeace is Kostas, Giannis, Lefteris, Eleonora and Dimitra, this is Greenpeace. It (Greenpeace) has some people who have a scientific background, but it is not a scientific position, like the other weird Belgians who are against wind. Okay? It’s Mr. Giannis, Mrs. Tasoula and Eleni or the mayor. It’s not some scientists who say it, it’s groups of citizens.”

[F]

“So the study of an engineer is the only scientific one. Ok? They may be thorough, they may not be, you may trust them, you may not trust them, but the most reliable of the three (NGOs, residents, engineer) is the study.”

[F]

The participants raised an issue concerning the trust they had in the engineer, as they were appointed by the company, and wanted to have a more independent expert in assessing the potential impacts of the wind turbines:

“How do we know that they are telling the truth, and they are not part of you? We want an engineer of our own.”

[S]

3.2.3. Public Participation

Throughout the RPG process, the facilitator emphasized the importance of public participation towards a just and sustainable society:

“Obviously as active citizens you have to go and position yourself, regardless of whether you are an expert on the subject, you have an obligation to have an opinion, you don’t have to be right, okay?”

[F]

“In essence, this discussion is not for you to decide to be in favor. This discussion is to convince you to be in favor. And that’s what it’s always for.”

[F]

Participants were asked to declare their position (for or against the windfarm) on two separate occasions. Each occasion was followed by a set of information the students received on their tablets as part of their scripts. The facilitator discussed how opinions can change in light of new information and that everyone is entitled to change their opinions:

“Guys, democracy means that when there are new arguments, we change our opinion… I was wrong and now I believe something else”.

[F]

There were also discussions on the ethics of changing one’s mind and what constitutes moral vs. immoral decision-making:

“That is, if, say, we hold a competition for the recruitment of new employees for the new positions that are to be opened, and we reward the locals in points, so that they can be appointed more easily, will you change your vote?

[F]

“Maybe yes”

[S]

“Maybe yes, very nice. This negotiation is not unethical. The other thing the guys were saying before, “what will they give us to change the vote” is unethical. Do we understand the difference between immoral and moral? It may look the same, it’s not. Because the argument is my wife will lose her job, we are here and you are breaking us up, there is the counter argument, if we help hire local people first. He has an argument that makes more sense.”

[F]

4. Discussion

Young adults are important members of our societies and drivers of political, societal, and environmental changes. Youth empowerment is imperative for the above changes to happen, and that can be bolstered through knowledge construction and meaningful public engagement [87,88]. This study sought to explore students’ knowledge on climate change and decarbonization, while examining how Horizon 2020 projects could shape youth empowerment.

During the PlayDecide activity, it was evident that students had a fair understanding of climate change and its environmental and societal consequences. Despite that, there was evidence of alternative conceptions and uncertainties amongst the students when issues were discussed in more detail. As an example, Sahara was discussed as the largest desert, but that is a common misconception. Such alternative conceptions have been reported in other studies of similar-age students in different countries [89,90]. These common alternative conceptions amongst individuals in different countries could be because of the power that the mass media have in dispersing information [91,92]. Amongst others, for youth empowerment to be possible, it is important that youth are able to identify and challenge those alternative conceptions by developing better understandings of a topic [93].

Both during the PlayDecide activity as well as the RPG, students expressed their concerns regarding both the impacts of climate change on themselves and their families, but they were also vocal about their disbelief and lack of trust in the politicians and adults in general, as well as the political system to address climate change. Those viewpoints have also been reported by studies on adults’ beliefs on the same matter [92,94,95]. Several students held the opinion that it was up to them to organize groups to fix things, rather than wait for political initiatives from the politicians. Such cohort organization and mobilization have also been evidenced in the Italian youth activism realm for environmental matters [96], as well as the “Fridays for Future” movement [20,97]. According to Kitanova [8], youth in the EU choose to abstain from political engagement. That disengagement with the traditional political world could have an impact on how environmental issues such as climate change will be addressed, as Weiss [98] suggests that youth are part of new political participation forms, i.e., non-institutionalized political participation. Those concerns and uncertainties around the inactions of adults and politicians have empowered youth to take actions towards climate change to promote the wellbeing of their future [48,99]. Additionally, the educational activities showcased the complexities of addressing climate change, and the students were aware of these complexities, especially socioecological complexities. The complexities span from whose opinion is more “valid” and should be trusted, to potential consequences of energy production in the wildlife of the Sahara Desert.

Part of the overall project was to explore people’s perceptions and acceptance of CCUS technologies. As mentioned above, when we requested a CCUS-based activity at the Science Museum, the answer was that they had never heard of these technologies before, so we would have to do something different. That raises the question of what level of acceptance and perceptions we seek to elicit from communities, when experts such as science educators are not familiar with those technologies. EU-funded CPPs can empower communities by ensuring that social acceptance or rejection is a long-term process and by enabling community members to develop the required capacity to deepen their content knowledge as well as consider previous experiences.

In any education activity, the role of the facilitator is vital as it can shape students’ engagement and involvement in the activity [100]. Similarly, and as presented in the Results Section, the facilitator at the Science Museum had strong opinions on some issues, e.g., nuclear energy, and they broke their RPG character to emphasize their opinions, while in some cases, the students were cut off from sharing their thoughts. At that point, it is important as researchers to reflect on our own positionalities when we analyze the data. Each of us subscribes to a certain understanding of reality and how knowledge is constructed, and that has implications on how the data is analyzed and discussed.

Throughout the educational activities, we noticed a lack of neutrality in teaching, and that can influence students’ opinions and create biases on matters that students are not necessarily very familiar with. As an example, the science museum facilitator adopted a positivist approach to science and knowledge, and that was in contrast to the students’ opinions and beliefs on the importance of forming social groups to achieve social changes. The impact of teachers’ beliefs on environmental matters has been discussed by Cotton [101], where the author argues that personal beliefs do matter, and they should be considered when designing curricula. Another example of bias was when matters of morality and public engagement were discussed during the RPG at the Science Museum. It was apparent that the facilitator, whether it was on purpose or not, brought their own values and morals to the table and presented them as the truth. As Veugelers [102] explains, based on Freire’s work on morality, morals are something contextual that depend on certain social, cultural, and political elements present in a society. Morality is a very important topic in public engagement and decision-making, but under what circumstances should students be exposed to it? Although it is essential to discuss morality as a topic in the school curriculum alongside the implications it can have on students’ decisions on ethical dilemmas [103], we find it problematic when educators try to instill their personal morals in students.

In addition to the above, the facilitator made some statements that could be debated, but because of his position and the power he held as an educator, his positionality was not argued or contested. In addition to the example of nuclear energy, they also stated that NGOs such as Greenpeace are just a group of people with no scientific background, so they should not be considered as a valid source of information. In contrast, the students did not have the resources to make their beliefs more vocal. This could be due to the educational setting where it is difficult to oppose the teacher as a figure of authority. It could also be due to limited experience of voicing their concerns in political and public spheres. In this particular instance, the teaching approach therefore aligned more with hierarchical classroom structures that obstruct constructive two-way dialogue amongst teachers and students [40,104].

While the aim of the education engagement activities was to use education both as a resource to empower youth and better understand their perceptions of climate change and decarbonization, we ran the risk of using education initiatives as a resource for indoctrination by dictating what the students should do and using our position to instill these opinions.

Several examples of misconceptions and uncertainties have been identified in this study. Milovanovic, et al. [105] suggested that the presence of misconceptions about climate change among engineering students could hinder their ability to feel empowered to make changes and find ways to address human-induced impacts on the planet. In addition, Darnovsky and Hasson [106] are calling for the active involvement of the public to reduce their misconceptions on controversial issues that could hinder their decision-making process.

5. Conclusions

As Horizon 2020 projects have been critiqued for both a lack of social science integration and insufficient evaluation of their capacity for societal impact [107,108], this study aimed to explore the potential of utilizing EU-funded climate change projects to enable educational activities to empower students in relation to climate change and CCUS technologies. We are confident that the results and discussion presented in this paper support the notion that research and innovation CCPs have the capacity to offer community engagement opportunities and increase social capital when designed in a meaningful and democratic way. In line with the above, we suggest more direct community engagement from Horizon Europe projects—as Horizon 2020 has now concluded—to encourage empowerment and knowledge construction. We suggest that EU-funded projects conduct need assessments for the local communities where the projects are to be based to empower the local communities, especially the youth. As this Horizon 2020 project gave little consideration to local communities during its design, any attempts at youth empowerment would be insufficient and meaningless due to the absence of youth participation in designing the elements of the project. In addition, the lack of youth’s political engagement is particularly important when EU countries place a lot of emphasis on initiatives such as the Green Deal to address socioecological issues, as the lack of youth political engagement could lead to their voices not being heard [8]. This paper extends our understanding of the role that youth should/could play in a Net Zero future and calls for more inclusive approaches to community engagement. Additionally, we have discussed the use of bilingual participatory methods and expanded the conversation of CCUS and decarbonization within a Greek context. According to Cattaneo, et al. [9], for an intervention to promote empowerment, it needs to be relevant to the local communities and remove any power imbalances, and the above two tenets were not achieved in our project. Although CCPs have both the potential and capacity to create a meaningful empowerment environment, it is essential that “empowered” communities do not come to situations as a fait accompli.