Our Why
The Problem & Our Solution
Both nature and young people are underserved and underrepresented in climate action, funding, and policy, yet both are critical components of nature and climate solutions.
Climate action needs nature, it needs youth, and it needs justice
Youth bear the burden of our intersecting planetary crisis – climate, nature, social inequity. Yet we are often excluded from decision-making processes that have a profound influence on our present and our future. By directing the ambition and moral authority that youth hold, we can influence key climate-nature decisions that will determine the shape of our collective futures. Y4N is a vehicle to direct this ambition by educating, equipping and establishing youth to be leaders on solutions for nature & climate together globally, with regional and local nuance.
When youth are provided with opportunities to develop their capabilities & knowledge on the climate-nature nexus; when we are given a space to meaningfully engage and share our stories and actions; and when our voices are valued in decision-making spaces as leaders within our local communities and on a global stage, the world is given a chance to fundamentally reimagine what a green, regenerative, sustainable and inclusive future might look like, where communities thrive with nature across generations.
As current and future leaders, we should be able to co-design our own future with decision-makers.
In the search for solutions to the climate crisis, decision-makers, civil society and political leaders cannot forget young people, they cannot forget frontline and marginalized communities, and they cannot forget nature. Y4N aims to break down silos and collaboratively bridge the broader network of climate and biodiversity youth organisations through knowledge-sharing, storytelling, and capacity building to address both of these issues together.
OUR GUIDING VALUES
Behind all of this is our organizational values. Collectively developed by the Y4N team, these values have grounded our work and guided our decision-making, our project development, and our collaborations since day one.
Learn more about each value below:
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Our work focuses on elevating tangible solutions to the nature and climate crises. Youth around the world are already leading on solutions within the nature-climate nexus. In our local communities, we are showing that actions speak louder than words; programs and initiatives, not pledges, create meaningful change. The crises of our time cannot be solved independently, and this is why we focus on intersectional and multidisciplinary approaches with diverse and inclusive leadership.
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At Youth4Nature, we believe that people and nature are deeply interconnected. This requires an intersectional and decolonial approach to tackling various forms of inequity and sovereignty within climate and environmental action that considers the diversity and power relations between and within different social groups. It also demands centering environmental justice, land justice, energy justice, social/economic justice, intergenerational justice and climate justice. Furthermore, it involves making a concerted effort as an organisation to continuously critique our own ways of knowing and working.
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Knowledge is the foundation for all the work that we do. To us, knowledge is inclusive of climate and biodiversity science, Indigenous knowledge, lived experience, and community-held knowledge. We commit to actively listening to, and upholding the knowledge of Indigenous peoples, frontline communities, and marginalised people around the world. We continuously seek to unlearn and relearn from and with diverse voices, ways of knowing and world-views; making a concerted effort as an organisation to perpetually critique our own ways of knowing and working. We commit to learning in interdisciplinary ways as we listen, conduct our own research, and exchange information.
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We retain autonomy over our work and identity as a by-youth, for-youth organisation as well as over ourselves as individuals and as young people working in partnership with established institutions. By remaining autonomous, we assert our independence as an organisation and the right to make decisions regarding the work we do, partnerships we accept, and the freedom to assert our views and perspectives. We support other youth and organisers who do the same.
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Systems-change requires systems-thinking. The climate and nature crises are connected with social-political, economic challenges, and if we fail to act in an integrated way, we will not achieve our goals. We are committed to upholding our values in the ways that we work as a team and are actively working to break down silos through an interdisciplinary approach that is rooted in the recognition of relationships between ecological and human well-being that are reciprocal, regenerative and uphold them at all times.