Search Results (53)

West Africa’s agri-food systems face a triple burden of malnutrition, climate vulnerability, and structural inefficiencies that compromise nutrition and public health. Despite increased attention to food security, agricultural strategies often prioritize yield over dietary quality. This paper explores the critical role of food processing in advancing Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture (NSA) and Nutrition-Smart Agriculture (NSmartAg) across West Africa. Drawing on a systems lens, it positions food processing not as a peripheral activity, but as a catalytic mechanism that connects nutrient-dense production with improved consumption outcomes. Food processing can reduce post-harvest losses, preserve micronutrients, extend food availability, and foster inclusive value chains particularly for women and youth. Yet, persistent challenges remain, including institutional fragmentation, infrastructure gaps, and limited financial and technical capacity. This paper proposes a conceptual framework linking food processing to NSA and NSmartAg objectives and outlines operational entry points for implementation. By integrating processing into agricultural policies, investment, education, and monitoring systems, stakeholders and policymakers can reimagine agriculture as a platform for resilience and nutritional equity. Strategic recommendations emphasize multisectoral collaboration, localized solutions, and evidence-informed interventions to drive the transformation toward sustainable, nutrition-oriented food systems. Full article

It is by now a common trope that youth climate activism has become a ‘global phenomenon’. Yet, it also has significant regional variations. This literature review analyses eighteen academic articles on the topic of youth climate activism in Asia. We found that the literature from Asia overall had ambitions to contextualise and nuance international scholarship on youth climate activism. This was achieved by emphasising social and cultural constructions of youth in different Asian contexts; by exploring inequality-related barriers for young people to enter into climate activism; by emphasising solidarity across classes and ages as a particular aspect of much Asian youth climate activism; and by showcasing the political restrictions in many Asian states, which inhibit (scholarship on) activism. We conclude that Asian avatars of youth climate activism have evolved in response to their distinct social, cultural, and political contexts, and that they challenge not easily transferable concepts such as ‘school strike’ and ‘future generations’. At the end, we offer suggestions for future research, including the need for going beyond desk studies when documenting discrete movements and for conceptualisations of youth climate activism that are inclusive of diverse contexts. Full article

Agricultural water resource management is increasingly challenged by climate variability, land degradation, and socio-economic pressures, particularly in the Mediterranean region. This study, conducted in 2023–2024 within the REACT4MED project (PRIMA initiative), addresses sustainable water use through a comparative analysis of organic and conventional farms in the Stornara and Tara area (Puglia, Italy). The research aimed to identify critical indicators for sustainable water management and develop ecosystem restoration strategies that can be replicated across similar Mediterranean agro-ecosystems. An interdisciplinary, participatory approach was adopted, combining technical analyses and stakeholder engagement through three workshops involving 30 participants from diverse sectors. Fieldwork and laboratory assessments included soil sampling and analysis of parameters such as pH, electrical conductivity, soil organic carbon, nutrients, and salinity. Cartographic studies of vegetation, land use, and pedological characterization supplemented the dataset. The key challenges identified were water loss in distribution systems, seawater intrusion, water pumping from unauthorized wells, and inadequate public policies. Soil quality was significantly influenced by salt stress, hence affecting crop productivity, while socio-economic factors affected farm income. Restoration strategies emphasized the need for water-efficient irrigation, less water-intensive crops, and green vegetation in infrastructure channels while incorporating also the native flora. Enhancing plant biodiversity through weed management in drainage channels proved beneficial for pathogen control. Proposed socio-economic measures include increased inclusion of women and youth in agricultural management activities. Integrated technical and participatory approaches are essential for effective water resource governance in Mediterranean agriculture. This study offers scalable, context-specific indicators and solutions for sustainable land and water management in the face of ongoing desertification and climate stress. Full article

YouthMappers chapters, utilizing OpenStreetMap (OSM), play a pivotal role in tackling climate challenges through education and activism. This study investigates the influence of a booster grant project on enhancing Climate Activism and Education efforts through YouthMappers chapters in Sri Lanka. Through a geometric approach, the research integrates measurable survey data from OSM platform data from 223 YouthMappers chapter respondents at four (04) universities in Sri Lanka to evaluate five critical factors/dimensions: Capacity Building and Funding Support (CBFS), Climate Activism and Education (CAE), Community Engagement and Collaboration (CEC), Technical Skills and Resources (TSR), and Sustainability and Policy Integration (SPI). The Friedman test confirmed statistically significant differences across all factors’ variables (p < 0.001), highlighting strengths in technical competence and educational integration, with gaps identified in community engagement and sustainability. A Radial Basis Function (RBF) model revealed moderate predictive accuracy, excelling in variables like CAE and TSR but indicating higher error rates in SPI and CEC. Practical outcomes include flood risk maps, curriculum-integrated teaching schemes, and localized mapping workshops. These results underscore the booster grant’s role in enabling impactful, youth-led geospatial initiatives. However, challenges such as internet access, training gaps, and language barriers remain. This study recommends expanding student and community participation, refining training strategies, and integrating OSM into university curricula. These scalable interventions offer valuable insights for replication in other vulnerable regions, enhancing climate resilience through community-driven, data-informed youth engagement. Full article

Climate change today is considered one of the most severe global problems. Additionally, it is inherently linked to sustainable development, particularly considering that it is a widespread problem affecting virtually all regions, countries, and continents. Therefore, it is essential to monitor its perception and behaviours towards it. Hence, there is the need for a diagnosis of climate-change attitudes found in various parts of the world. This premise is the foundation for the original study reported in the article. It offers the results of a survey of 300 adult rural residents from southeastern Poland. The article aims to diagnose the respondents’ attitudes towards climate change in the context of sustainable development premises. Respondents’ opinions on the potential activities their local communities could take to be more sustainable are a substantial part of the results. The most common suggestions were low-emission public transport (in the Wadowice District, it was 55% of responses) and road and street redesign to promote safe cycling and walking environments (in the Kraków and Tarnów Districts, over 50% of responses). The respondents found the promotion of sustainable development among youth and older people to be the least important (in three out of five districts, this percentage did not exceed 20%). The other thematic block was specific environmental protection and sustainable development activities that society should prioritise over a five-year horizon. The participants considered the development of new ways to eliminate waste in total production (in the Tarnów District, over 73% of responses), new technologies to curb the carbon footprint and GHG emissions (over 63% in the Wadowice District), and new technologies to scrape and monitor air pollutants (approx. 70% in the Kraków District). Full article

Youth make up a fifth of the world’s population and will suffer the consequences of the climate catastrophe to differing extents depending on their social and geographical locations. The climate crisis is thus a matter of both intergenerational and racial/imperial injustice. Intersectional and interdisciplinary climate justice approaches are growing in the field of youth climate activism and, more often, these are necessarily engaging with collaborative methods to platform the voices of marginalised youth and those who live the colonial difference. Our paper provides early reflections from a youth climate activism artistic research project titled ‘Theatre of Climate Action: Amplifying Youth Voices for Climate Justice in Guadeloupe and South Africa’ (ToCA). In this project, sixteen young people aged 18-30 from South Africa and Guadeloupe collaborate to design, produce, and create theatre performances that reflect their exploration of climate justice through their lived experiences using artistic research methods. Specifically, we examine the opportunities and challenges in using the framework of Safe(r), Brave(r), and Riskier Spaces to support collaborative and emancipatory art-making practices that allow youth to become co-creators in this project. Insights revealed that an intentional embrace of safety, bravery, and risk as an ethico-political basis for art making was critical to cultivate a sense of community, trust, and belonging for youth co-creators. Full article

Recurrent droughts in Poland necessitate an increase in public awareness regarding their causes, consequences, and mitigation strategies. Education plays a crucial role in this process. The aim of this study was to analyze the knowledge and opinions of primary school students and university students from Krakow regarding drought. To assess their understanding, a survey was conducted, including multiple-choice questions and Likert-scale-based questions. A comparative analysis was performed to identify differences between the two groups, focusing on the relationship between the level of education and drought awareness. This study highlighted the need to intensify climate education at both the school and university levels. Furthermore, it emphasized the necessity of broader discussions on the risks associated with extreme weather events (including droughts) and the importance of actively supporting youth engagement in climate-related initiatives. Full article

This study examines a social-justice-focused environmental education program serving marginalized students through fostering engagement with local communities and natural environments. It presents a focused ethnographic case study of teachers of color who designed and implemented an ethnic studies and environmental education curriculum intended to address the educational alienation experienced by many students as well as the intersection of social justice and environmental stewardship. The study considers how teachers at two very different urban schools—one a continuation school, the other a traditional college preparatory high school—provided a venue for students to advocate on behalf of oppressed communities with which they identified. Researchers collected qualitative data from a variety of sources: field notes from participant observation of outdoor and classroom activities, document review of curriculum and student projects, focus group interviews with 86 students, and semi-structured individual interviews with teachers and alumni. Students in this innovative program did not fit the classic climate justice activist profile by engaging in climate marches, raising money for environmental organizations, or lobbying Congress for better environmental legislation. However, a key finding from the program and the teachers who lead it is to broaden our understanding of what it means to be a climate activist. Full article

This study explores the “nonprofitization” of youth climate organizing from the perspective of six youth activists who participated in designing a pilot environmental activism program for a large science museum located in Northern California. Through case study methodology, the authors explore how adultism and institutional control stifled youth activism and the ultimate success of their initiatives. Our analysis highlights the institutional practices, intergenerational value gaps, and inadequate understanding of social movement principles from the partner site that reified colonial hierarchies of knowledge and prevented genuine support and collaboration with youth in climate activism. Factors such as profit motives, a desire for control, generational gaps, and a failure to see youth as equals contribute to this problem. We conclude by proposing alternative institutional practices with youth that center on intergenerational power-sharing to counter the trend of nonprofit organizations greenwashing youth social movements. Full article

Communities in the Dominican Republic (DR) face increased natural disasters, poor air quality, food insecurity, and health impacts related to climate change. We evaluated the success of a train-the-trainer program to empower community leaders, women, and at-risk youth with the knowledge and skills to increase individual and community resilience in Cristo Rey, Dominican Republic. Three in-person two-day courses were conducted between July and August 2024 at the Universidad Iberoamericana. Each session included eight lectures and collaborative learning activities on climate change science, adaptation, resilience, and health impacts. Intra-group analyses comparing pre- and post-course surveys assessed participants’ climate change awareness, literacy, and communication and response skills. One hundred and four attendees participated in the survey study. Of the 100 participants with demographic data, 55% (n = 55) were 35 years old or younger, 70% (n = 70) identified as female, and 45% (n = 45) lived in Cristo Rey. The participants reported high baseline climate change awareness. Compared to before the course, the participants reported increased literacy regarding the environmental impacts of climate change relevant to the DR and the specific health impacts (p-value < 0.05) and increased climate change-related communication and response skills (p-value < 0.001). This study suggests competency-based, regional-specific courses deployed in a train-the-trainer model, have the potential to equip community members with knowledge to protect their health. Full article

Ecocritical children’s literature research in the 2020s focuses on eco-activism, especially climate activism. Although the causes of activism have changed, different kinds of dissent are still relevant. This article focuses on Mika Wickström’s novel Vastakarvaan (Against the Grain, published in 2002), which describes a young Finnish student’s ethical dilemma: her eco-anarchist friends are planning an attack on a fur farm that the protagonist’s family owns. It evaluates the novel with new theoretical insights from affective ecocriticism and narrative empathy, and the main concepts that have been explored are youth activism and types of dissent. The analysis is grounded in the concept of strategic empathy, exploring the ways in which emotions and ethical decisions of the protagonist are represented in physical, social, and temporal settings: how types of dissent are presented and how bounded strategic empathy, ambassadorial strategic empathy, and broadcast strategic empathy are presented. The analysis demonstrates how the protagonist’s dilemma is emphasized in different stages of dissent: her decision to participate in the attack or not is debated on different levels of narration. Full article

This research investigates youth participation in climate change politics and policymaking in South Africa, responding to a notable lack of Global South-facing studies in the literature on youth climate activism. Guided by our lead author’s substantial engagement in South Africa’s youth climate movement from 2014–2024 and drawing upon semi-structured interviews with 12 young climate activists, we offer rich insights into young South Africans’ motivations to participate in climate politics and policymaking. We then draw upon these insights to offer a series of provocations for climate change education. On investigating why youth participate, we find that although they report similar intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for participation to their Global North counterparts, South African youth climate activists place far greater emphasis on situated awareness and lived experience. We further improve the understanding of how young people perceive meaningful participation and climate (in)justices and how this shapes and is shaped by their activism. We therefore emphasise the value of incorporating both local case studies and affective elements in climate change pedagogies to encourage participation in collective climate action. Ultimately, we call for an enhanced recognition and inclusion of youth as active contributors to, and educators within, climate change governance and for the reconceptualization of youth climate activism, and policy engagement as key sites of transformative learning. Full article

Aiming to better understand the relationship between youth activism and institutional politics, this article analyzes young climate activists’ interactions with political parties and how they shape the dynamics of the School Strike for Climate. Through a multi-sited ethnography in Portugal’s two major cities, we examined the participation experiences of young climate strikers from both chapters of the movement, revealing the contingent and complex development of their relationships with party politics, which ultimately influences the dynamics of Portuguese youth climate activism. The ethnographic data uncovered ambivalent and tensional relationship patterns with political parties in the two local groups. While closeness and collaboration with actors linked to institutional politics aimed at strengthening the climate movement’s broader political representation, it also prompted resistance, leading to internal conflicts within the movement. Our findings highlight differing political strategies and ideological stands among local groups, as well as tensions and ambivalences in the interactions with political parties. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenges of sustaining the School Strike for Climate movement over time and the ways in which activist movements negotiate political affiliations and internal cohesion. Full article

Background/Objectives: The climate crisis has been associated with significant and complex challenges for youth mental health. Anxiety, sadness, and anger have been identified as core emotional responses to the climate crisis and its impacts. However, there are limited data on how these emotions correlate with climate awareness and engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. The present study explores parental accounts on climate crisis-related emotional responses, awareness levels, and engagement in climate actions among Greek youth, as well as the role of their parents’ emotional responses. Methods: This study employed a cross-sectional online survey of parents with children aged 10–18 years in Greece. A total of 186 parents completed questionnaires assessing their children’s and their own climate crisis-related emotional responses (worry, sadness, and anger), levels of climate awareness, and engagement in mitigating actions. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine associations between children’s emotions and sociodemographic factors, parental emotions, and climate-related behaviors. Results: The children in our study exhibited lower levels of climate-related worry, sadness, and anger compared to their parents. While 33.3% of parents reported worrying “very much”, only 7.5% of children were reported as experiencing this level of distress. Parental emotional responses were significant predictors of children’s emotions, with high parental worry associated with increased odds of child worry (adjusted OR: 7.80, 95% CI: 1.71–35.62). Climate awareness was higher among parents (64%) than children (44.7%), and children engaged less frequently in climate-mitigating behaviors than parents. Family communication about climate change was also strongly associated with children’s emotional responses. Conclusions: According to their parents’ accounts, children and adolescents in Greece exhibit moderate levels of overall climate distress, while parental emotions and communication within the family influence their responses. The present study’s findings support the need for climate education and policy initiatives that enhance emotional resilience and encourage active engagement among youth. Full article

Outdoor recreational activities offer critical benefits to youth development, yet their impacts have been insufficiently synthesized. This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the effects of outdoor recreation on children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years. Significant improvements were observed in psychological well-being, social connectivity, and environmental awareness, emphasizing the multidimensional benefits of such activities. Challenges such as urbanization and reduced access to green spaces highlighted the need for prioritizing outdoor engagement to counteract the growing detachment from nature. This study followed PRISMA guidelines and included 21 studies published between 2014 and 2024. A random-effects meta-analysis revealed positive effects on mood, anxiety reduction, interpersonal relationships, and environmental responsibility. However, significant heterogeneity reflected variability in study designs and contexts. The GRADE framework assessed evidence certainty, rating psychological benefits as moderate, social connectivity as high, and environmental awareness as low. Limitations included reliance on self-reported data and exclusion of pandemic-era studies. These findings emphasized the role of outdoor activities in addressing modern challenges such as urbanization and climate change by fostering holistic youth development. Policymakers and educators should be encouraged to integrate outdoor programs into curricula and community initiatives to promote mental health, social cohesion, and environmental stewardship. Full article