This year’s London Climate Action Week (LCAW) brought together more than 75,000 people across over 1,000 events in just nine days. Year after year, it is becoming increasingly clear that the week has cemented its place as a key moment in the global climate action calendar.
The theme for this year was ‘cooperation in a fragmented world’. We should pause and ask ourselves: cooperation with who?
For many of us, cooperation instinctively conjures images of closer collaboration between governments, bilateral, multilateral institutions, NGOs, civil society organisations, community leaders and the private sectors. They are understood as the right critical actors to bring to the table to achieve meaningful climate action in our fragmented world.
These are important partnerships, but it is also worth reflecting on who else has a stake in climate action and whose perspectives are less visible in conversations on cooperation. It is children and young people that are facing and will bear the greatest burden of a worsening climate crisis and global fragmentation, yet we seldom stop to reflect and think why are our understanding of cooperation never extends to them. They are not just vulnerable groups; they are also driving action on climate change within their communities, across movements, and on national and global platforms.
For Save the Children, this year’s LCAW provided an opportunity to challenge this exclusion and demonstrate that any cooperation must include children and young people.
THE child champions fighting climate change
In partnership with the SOAS University of London, we were privileged to host a panel of young climate advocates, campaigners and changemakers to discuss their experiences of driving climate action. We heard from young people representing the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Youth Council, Malaysian Youth Delegation, and Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP).
The event provided space to ask an important question: how can decision-makers, funders and civil society stand in solidarity with children and young people and create the conditions for their climate leadership to thrive?
Listening to their experiences leading on climate action was a powerful reminder that youth climate action takes many forms. From protests and grassroot collectivisation, to influencing policy and advocating for rights, to delivering local climate projects, there are already many ways in which young people are advancing climate action in ways that reflect their contexts, communities and priorities. This diversity was greatly appreciated across the speakers, with panellists recognising the need for these different forms to learn from and support one another. For example, they highlighted the importance of ensuring that policy development connects to and is informed by grassroot movements and voices.
Our panellists reflected the diverse, knowledgeable, and influential set of climate actors of today, not some distance ‘future’ that adults work for than with. Amidst the anxiety and despair that many of us experience in trying to achieve progress, they shared how they keep going and find momentum. From watching The Hunger Games to reminding themselves how good change feels, their resilience, an act of resistance in a fragmented world, is an inspiration to all of us.
how we can become better allies
Here are some key reflections from the discussion on how we can become better allies to young climate leaders:
Move from consultation to co-creation
When we say that children are experts on the issues that affect them, this should be taken as a statement of fact, not a slogan. Young people are acutely aware of the realities of a changing climate, and the intensifying impacts their communities face because of their collective experience. Their perspectives offer some of the clearest insights and solutions about what current and future generations need.
But participation only is not enough. We must move beyond simply asking for young people’s views and instead create opportunities for them to shape decisions, lead processes and co-create solutions in multiple arenas. What we miss by treating young people as an ‘add-on’ to our work is their creativity, their ability to bring ideas that sit outside the mainstream and to see solutions that adults overlook that could bring significant impact.
One way to achieve this is through stronger partnership and coalition building with youth organisations and networks, as well as meaningful intergenerational collaboration. Genuine co-creation is not inviting young people into a one-off programme or consultation; it is about building a sustained partnership and recognising young people as important stakeholders in climate action.
One of the panellists shared a powerful analogy on what meaningful collaboration should look like. As adult allies, our role is to support the departure and arrival points of the journey, but the journey itself should be steered by young people.
Continue to move beyond seeing young people solely as beneficiaries of our projects, and work more systematically with young activists and youth civil society organisations to co-create and implement solutions
Avoid tokenism: listen and share power
Meaningful allyship requires organisations to critically examine their own practices, biases and approaches to youth engagement. Too often, young people’s participation is welcomed in principle but limited in influence. This tokenistic participation not only comes at a cost of overburdening young people, but also reflects the hierarchical relationships through which many actors approach them, infantilising their contributions.
If we want to see real and lasting change for communities most affected by the climate crisis, we need to start having more honest conversations about the resistance to share power with young people. Moving towards co-creation is important and necessary, but so too is the cultural shift that accompanies it.
Being an ally is not about creating space and then controlling it. It is about being led, listening carefully, and centering young people’s voices in decision-making processes.
Proactively engage young people and do not be afraid to listen and enact their wishes.
Resource and invest in young people
One message emerged strongly in the discussion, and it is one that is often neglected, even by those that work with young people. We must move beyond supporting young people in principle and start investing in their leadership in practice: essentially, let’s put our money where our mouths are.
Key to this is trusting the knowledge, expertise and leadership of young people to invest in them – something our panellists emphasised repeatedly. Save the Children’s SHIFT campaign and Young People Climate Fund were designed with this belief at the core.
Building a sustainable climate action movement requires more than collaboration. It means helping to create an environment where young leaders are equipped with the resources, skills, evidence and knowledge they need to strengthen their agency, advocacy and leadership over the long term.
It could be ensuring that funding reaches young people directly, using our relationships with donors to advocate for youth-led initiatives, and embedding meaningful child and youth participation from the earliest stages of programme design. It can also be organisations making technical expertise more accessible and placing it in the hands of young people to strengthen their leadership, from research and data to policy analysis and training.
Do not sell young people a dream
Across all these reflections, one additional point surfaced repeatedly: be transparent, honest and accountable. Young people do not need us to set unrealistic expectations or make grand promises. They need partners who are transparent about what they can deliver and the challenges involved.
Looking Ahead
London Climate Action Week was a timely reminder than children and young people are already driving change in their communities, shaping policy conversations and developing solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our time. We should all be challenging ourselves to think ‘cooperation with who’, and where do children and young people fit in within our answer?
Our role is not to speak for them, but to listen, support, invest and create the conditions for their leadership to thrive. If we are serious about responding to the climate crisis, then young people must not be on the sidelines of climate action. They must be at its heart.
