We have all heard of Greta Thunberg, but did you know thousands of young women around the world are also taking action for Climate Justice? On March 23, the Movement for Community-led Development co-hosted a Parallel Event to the 2022 UN Commission on the Status of Women diving into how four young women are engaging in climate activism.
Young leaders are paving the way for urgently needed global action for climate change. They are not constrained by the protocols and processes we put in place to slowly progress toward change—instead, they leverage their creativity to generate solutions, action, and hope. During this event, we met young women from Bangladesh, Mexico, Pakistan, and South Africa from across the climate justice movement.
From these activists, we learned that there is no single, correct way to be a climate activist, but engaging and integrating the youth perspective into development work is transformational. These young leaders taught participants lessons that they have learned along the way and left participants inspired to follow in their footsteps. Each of them showed us that even by starting small, we can be activists in our own realm.