Good Idea: Consult young people on climate policy

Provider Plan UK and the Citizenship Foundation
Name Make The Link: Climate exChange

Young people will have to live with the consequences of today’s climate policies. Yet it is not they who make climate-changing decisions.

To address this, young campaigners from the UK aged 11 to 19 are joining forces with others from across Europe and Africa to demand that the European Parliament does more to listen to their concerns.

Lobbying began in April, with the launch of a competition that asked how politicians could better engage with young people. More than 200 young people responded from the two continents.

Plan UK and the Citizenship Foundation then worked with a core group of five young people from the UK, five from the Netherlands and one from Bulgaria to consolidate their opinions into a manifesto.

“We took all the views and opinions and pulled out what we thought were the most important issues, and those fed into the final declaration,” says Holly Middleditch, climate change co-ordinator at Plan UK, which is leading the project in the UK.

The result was a document demanding that Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) involve young people in their decision making and work to get sustainability included in the school curriculum.

“We want to see more MEPs engaging directly with young people, as a way of making the decision-making process more sustainable and relevant to young people,” says Middleditch. “We’re asking European representatives to spend just an hour a week speaking to youth networks, such as the Youth Climate Coalition, and to consult in a non-tokenistic way.”

The manifesto was signed by 55 MEPs. The young campaigners are now asking other young people to lobby their MEPs to sign the document to reach the 350 signatory target that must be met to require the EU to implement its recommendations.