Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing


Background

The planet is now home to 2 billion youth (15-24 years of age), the largest global youth cohort in history who are providing new insights and collective responses to Planetary Health challenges. Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate, which evolved into Fridays for Future and the Global Youth Climate Movement, is an obvious example of youth leadership and advocacy. However, there are now untold quantities and types of youth actions happening each day around the world as young people respond to planetary crises with transformative approaches. The Partnership for Youth and Planetary Well-being is an educative research project that harnesses, supports and foregrounds youth-centred work in Canada, Chile, Costa Rica and Belize with three aims:

  • To conduct unique research with/by/for young people that centres and analyzes their work for planetary health

  • To share data and analyses through international connections that facilitate the flow and exchange of knowledge into global and local youth-serving communities who are empowered to enact change

  • To co-develop with youth and their communities new educational tools to support life at the intersections of the SDGs (and not simply teach “about” them).

This Partnership is funded by York University’s Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Clusters Fund and built upon long-standing relationships with communities to employ decolonizing and educative data collection and knowledge-sharing processes including youth-made films and stories that are shared in educative ways with multiple audiences (e.g., public, youth, NGOs, policymakers). This presentation illustrates our research processes with/by/for Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people and their communities in the global North and South through inclusive, equitable and socially just participatory research methods. The inter-generational and intercultural work with youth, scholars, NGOs, educators, and communities is made visible in the presentation of the data and analysis. Implications for, and extensions to, the nascent Planetary Health Education Framework are discussed as they emerge from work.

Challenge

The 2022 UN Human Development Report identifies entrenched and overarching ecological, climate and social crises that have caused significant declines in human and planetary well-being in 90 percent of the world’s countries. New, transformative, and collective responses are required to redress these natural and human crises through action and advocacy for planetary health defined as “...the highest attainable standard of health, well-being, and equity worldwide through judicious attention to the human systems—political, economic, and social—that shape the future of humanity and the Earth’s natural systems and defines the safe environmental limits within which humanity can flourish. 1 The planet is now home to two billion youth (15-24 years), all of whom are and will suffer disproportionately from these crises. But this largest-ever cohort of youth are not mere passive spectators. A massive global climate movement is underway, driven by youth leadership, action, and advocacy and resulting in the proliferation of initiatives across the planet. However, we do not yet understand the size, scope, power, or meaning of this youth movement nor its consequences for youth and planetary well-being.

1 Whitmee, S., Haines, A., Beyrer, C., Boltz, F., Capon, A., Ferreira de Souza Dias, B. (2015). Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. The Lancet 386. 10007: 1973-2028.

Objectives

The Partnership establishes and grows connections between diverse, inter-generational groups of scholars, youth, trainees, activists, communities, and civil societies in the Americas to:

  • Map the range and efficacy of youth-centered policies that define and support youth and planetary well-being

  • Work with inclusive groups of young people and their communities to research, record, and analyze their experiences, practices understandings, and responses

  • Leverage our fresh data for co-development with youth of new education that intentionally amplifies the impacts, responses and solutions from youth to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals)

  • Track, evaluate, and mobilize research and educational outcomes with global and local audiences to make a difference.

Scholarly work, training and action take place across three interconnected themes:

THEME 1
Youth Wellbeing

THEME 2
Living Sustainably

THEME 3
Education for Global Good.

Methods

Building on deep existing and inter-generational relationships, our research produces innovative comparative data and analyses that mark both differences and similarities in Global North/South contexts with diverse experiences of post-colonialism, losses and methods of revitalization of traditional knowledge, language and biodiversity, and adverse effects of climate change. We fill gaps in knowledge by asking: How are these young people affected and how do their responses meaningfully contribute to living well and forging solutions? We develop fresh ethnographic research and Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) to understand how these young women, men and gender-diverse people experience systemic inequalities including inter-generational and ecological injustice, and how emerging inequalities impact their well-being. We engage young people and communities who have been made marginal to mainstream youth climate action efforts.

From Canada, Costa Rica and Belize, we begin our work by inviting 100 youth who identify as 2nd+ generation settlers, newcomers, immigrants, Indigenous, cis/trans genders and/or from ecologically precarious communities and varying income levels. All young people are welcome, as reflective of local demographics. 50 of the youth participants invited an elder community member to participate.

Youth Advisory Committee

We are establishing an international Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) across sites. The YAC members will support this work by inclusively recruiting youth participants, and participating in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion training and training to be certified as Young Anthropologists who co-collect, analyze and mobilize data. The YAC offers an opportunity to engage deeply with these young people by providing them with training opportunities and genuinely seeking their input and guidance on aspects of research participant recruitment and engagement, data collection methods, data collection and analysis, and the co-creation of innovative, relevant Knowledge Mobilization outputs.

Outcomes

This work engages and trains young people and their communities in processes of research with/by/for them about aspects of individual and planetary well-being.

  1. Trans-disciplinary Scholarship (Planetary Health, Education, Youth Studies)

  2. Training (1000+ youth, communities, students and HQP)

  3. New quality education for Action and Advocacy (local, national and global audiences; eg, Youth Climate Report, Planetary Health Film Lab, Wekimun School curriculum, Rooted and Rising Youth Climate Action Program)

  4. Network building and growth (new relationships to address SDGs and Planetary Health Education)