The Youth Climate Justice Project

All across the world, children and young people are standing up for their rights and leading different types of climate action such as taking legal action, protesting, or taking action at home, school, in the community, and online.  

Led by Prof. Aoife Daly, we are a team of researchers at University College Cork in Ireland who want to understand more about children and young people’s climate action across different countries and what this means for children’s rights.  

We are involved in an exciting research project called Youth Climate Justice. In our research, we will: 

• look at examples where children and young people around the world have taken legal action about the climate crisis; 
• talk to children and young people who have been taking other types of climate action; and  
• hold creative workshops to understand what children think about their rights, the environment, and climate change. 

By the end of the five years of this project, we will better understand:  

• How to make legal systems more accessible to children who are standing up for their rights to climate justice.  
• In what ways children’s role as climate leaders might be changing the way we understand and think about children's rights.  

We will also look to have achieved the following over the project’s life: 

• Publication of a database of the most relevant and important child and youth climate cases that can be used by academics, practitioners, activists, and children alike.  
• Creation of a Youth Climate Justice network that brings together academics, practitioners, and youth for events, reports, and other initiatives to examine, bring attention to and better understand child and youth climate action. 
• Development of new evidence-informed Child-Friendly Climate Justice (CFCJ) practitioner guidelines (which hopefully will be embedded into a ‘live’ climate case). 
• Proposition of a new theory – post paternalism - to rethink children’s rights.   

The Youth Climate Justice project is partnered with both the School of Law and the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) at UCC and is funded by the European Union European Research Council (ERC)*. 

*Funded by the European Union (ERC, 101088453). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.