Resource type: Report
Climate Futures: Youth Perspectives is a 100-page Cumberland Lodge Report, published in September 2021, with a resounding call to action from young people across the UK and around the world, to tackle the climate emergency.
This report marks the culmination of over a year of research and intergenerational, cross-sector dialogue. It draws on views and expectations of young people from a broad range of ages and backgrounds, locally and internationally.
Climate Futures: Youth Perspectives
Part I of the report presents an independent overview of current thinking and research about the climate crisis, and young people’s role in addressing it.
In Part II, we discuss young people’s concerns and priorities for urgent action, with 17 practical, policy-focused recommendations for change.
You can find out more about the report launch, streamed live from Cumberland Lodge on Thursday 16 September 2021, here.
Download
Please download your free digital copy of the full report below.
Recommendations
The report’s recommendations, each expanded on in full in the report, are:
Work with us: we are your partners, and only by working together can we make a better future possible.
- As an outcome of COP 26, create a Youth Climate Parliament to facilitate international and intergenerational dialogue on climate solutions and resilience, over the next decade.
- Lower the voting age to 16 years old, in line with the Scottish model.
- Conduct citizens’ assemblies on climate action.
- Protect the interests of future generations with legislation that requires public bodies to adequately consider the long-term impacts of their decision making.
We want more than commitments; we demand accountability.
- Ensure that international agreements and national commitments are backed by legally binding, fully funded climate policies, with clear penalties set out for any failure to meet emissions reduction targets.
- Allocate 5% of GDP to addressing the climate crisis.
- Require finance ministers to report annually on climate spending across all departments, to ensure greater transparency.
- All parties to the Paris Agreement must immediately align and expedite domestic policy in response to the climate emergency, bringing the same energy and urgency to safeguarding our collective future that we see during a financial crash, pandemic, or natural disaster.
Climate policy must be integrated with social and economic policy, and funded by the actors who have benefited the most from environmental degradation.
- Ensure that carbon taxes target at the wealthiest in society.
- Require fossil fuel companies to fund carbon capture and storage initiatives.
- Ensure that the process of decarbonising our economy is fair and that we meet the basic needs of humanity sustainably.
Education is failing to prepare us for the future and must be reformed.
- Legislate for education reform that incorporates sustainability and climate change across the formal curriculum.
- Support the progression of The Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill through Parliament, ahead of hosting COP26.
Governments must actively support green business and invest in green jobs.
- Invest in Government-funded green apprenticeships.
- Encourage organisations to pursue B-Corp certification, to guide the rapid adoption of more sustainable business practices.
Treat fossil fuels like the threat to our future that they are.
- Adopt a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, to send a clear message to the energy industry and investors that the era of fossil fuel extraction is over.
Net-zero carbon solutions must result in biodiversity net-gain.
- We call for all parties to the Paris Agreement to review their NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) for tackling the climate crisis in light of the impact of climate policies on biodiversity.