Charting a youth vision for a just and sustainable future

The report presents a vision for a healthy planet based on solidarity, equality, and living within planetary boundaries. It argues that current economic metrics like GDP fuel environmental degradation and calls for a shift toward health and well-being. Based on a survey of over 900 youth from 89 countries, it highlights widespread climate anxiety and a perceived lack of youth agency in global governance. The authors propose specific policy pathways, including a Global Resilience Mechanism for social security, inclusive disaster risk reduction, and a rapid low-carbon transition. It emphasizes the need to move beyond tokenistic youth representation toward meaningful decision-making power and comprehensive climate education.

• Youth experience significant psychological distress due to the climate crisis; over half of the survey respondents reported feeling anxiety, and nearly 20% feel powerless.
• Children born in 2020 face drastically higher lifetime exposure to extreme weather events compared to those born in 1960, including 6.8 times more heatwaves, 2.8 times more river floods, 2.6 times more droughts, and twice as many wildfires.
• The youth vision advocates for replacing GDP with metrics focused on health, education, and community well-being to assess national prosperity, arguing that economic growth as the sole metric drives environmental degradation.
• To restore the relationship with nature by 2030, the report calls for a world without biodiversity offsets, limiting global temperature rise to under 1.5°C, and ensuring growth remains within planetary boundaries.
• The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that global crises require collective cooperation and that delays in action are costly; the report suggests applying these lessons to the climate crisis by treating it as an existential threat.
• The report proposes a 'Global Resilience Mechanism' consisting of a Global Safety Net and a Global Social Security Fund to support vulnerable populations during shocks caused by climate change, disease, or conflict.
• Youth representation in global climate governance is viewed as tokenistic; 57% of survey respondents feel youth are inadequately represented, with higher levels of perceived inadequacy among youth from non-Annex I countries.
• There is a critical gap in climate literacy due to rigid curricula and lack of teacher training; the report calls for mandatory climate education with civic engagement components across all educational levels.
• Youth are increasingly using climate litigation to hold governments and corporations accountable, with cases filed in over 28 countries, often led by young plaintiffs.

APA

D., A., N., E., R., H., K., M., C., M., A., N., J., N., J., O., B., R., S., K. L., Z., S., & K., Y. (2022). Charting a youth vision for a just and sustainable future. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/stockholm50-youthreport-10.51414-sei2022.010.pdf

Chicago

D., Aggarwal,, Esquivel, N., Hocquet, R., Martin, K., Mungo, C., Nazareth, A., Nikam, J., et al. Charting a youth vision for a just and sustainable future. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2022. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/stockholm50-youthreport-10.51414-sei2022.010.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{d2022charting, author = {D., Aggarwal, and N., Esquivel, and R., Hocquet, and K., Martin, and C., Mungo, and A., Nazareth, and J., Nikam, and J., Odenyo, and B., Ravindran, and S., Kurinji, L. and Z., Shawoo, and K., Yamada,}, title = {{Charting a youth vision for a just and sustainable future}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2022}, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/stockholm50-youthreport-10.51414-sei2022.010.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }