E232_1 Climate justice for the next generation About this free course This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University course E232 Exploring childhood and youth - http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules/e232. This version of the content may include video, images and interactive content that may not be optimised for your device. You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University – Climate justice for the next generation There you’ll also be able to track your progress via your activity record, which you can use to demonstrate your learning.

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978-1-4730-3138-8 (.epub) This free course, Climate justice for the next generation, introduces you to a contemporary, emerging issue in Childhood and Youth Studies. You will examine some of the debates around environmental change, its specific impact on children and young people, and the role of children and young people as activists and campaigners within their changing environments.

Figure 1 Climate change protesters near the British Parliament as part of a global day of protest A young person holding up a placard during a protest. The placard reads: ‘I’m 16. I’m Angry. This is not fair’.

The idea of climate justice for children and young people is based, in part, on a respect for children’s rights so the first section of this course will introduce children’s rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The second section will then focus specifically on the impacts that climate change has on children’s rights, while the third will examine climate change in terms of inter-generational social justice. In the fourth section you will examine the wider relationships between children and the environment and then in the fifth and final section you will look at the contemporary work being done on ‘plastic childhoods’. Specifically in Section 5 you will look at the ways that plastics are entangled, both positively and negatively, in children’s lives. This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course E232 Exploring childhood and youth. After studying this course, you should be able to: understand the importance of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) recognise the links between children’s rights and climate justice understand the impacts of climate change on children and young people and recognise the reasons why they are at the forefront of climate change campaigns appreciate the relationship between children and the environment understand the idea of ‘plastic childhoods’ and look at the ways that plastics are entangled in children’s lives. The idea that children have rights is a central proposition of Childhood and Youth Studies and is based on almost a century of international legislation. In 1924, the first ever international children’s rights treaty, The Declaration of Geneva, was adopted by the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations). It was written by the founder of the Save the Children Fund, Eglantyne Jebb, who argued that children should be protected not only out of charity but should be fed, clothed and sheltered as a right.

Figure 2 Eglantyne Jebb (1876 -1928), founder of the Save the Children Fund (1918) and initiator of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

In five points, the Declaration set out the special rights that all children had because of their age and perceived vulnerabilities, as well as the responsibilities that all adults had in fulfilling those rights (Box 1) . Box 1 Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1924) The child must be given the means requisite for its normal development, both materially and spiritually. The child that is hungry must be fed, the child that is sick must be nursed, the child that is backward must be helped, the delinquent child must be reclaimed, and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and succoured. The child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress. The child must be put in a position to earn a livelihood, and must be protected against every form of exploitation. The child must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must be devoted to the service of its fellow men. (University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, no date) Since the Declaration of the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1924, there have been various international conventions, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which have clauses that invoke special protection for children. The most significant children’s rights treaty, however, is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which came into force in 1989. You will look at this next.

The UNCRC is the most important international children’s rights convention and is central to understanding contemporary childhoods. Children’s rights are part of broader human rights legislation but the UNCRC emphasises that as well as the same rights all children have as human beings, they have additional rights to special protections and provisions because of their age and developing capabilities. To help introduce the UNCRC, watch the video below which provides a useful summary of the rights all children are entitled to. Video 1 [MUSIC PLAYING] CHILD: Did you know that every person in the world has human rights? CHILD: Even children have rights. CHILD: Human rights are the things that every person should have. CHILD: Or be able to do. CHILD: To live a good life. CHILD: With respect and security. CHILD: Every person in the whole world has these rights. CHILD: Because each of us is born equal. CHILD: In dignity and right. CHILD: Because children are young and sometimes weak. CHILD: They need special protection. CHILD: So that they can enjoy their human rights. CHILD: It is for this reason. CHILD: That children's human rights. CHILD: Have been written. CHILD: In a special document. CHILD: Called the Convention on the Rights of the Child. CHILD: Let's find out more. NARRATOR: So what are these human rights in the Convention on the Rights of the Child? Well, the right to life means every child's life should be protected. Children have the right to live in a clean and safe environment with proper care and supervision by their parents or other adults. The right to education means that every child must receive quality instruction so that they're able to read, write, and count and develop their mental and physical abilities so they can reach their full potential as adults. The right to food means that every child must have enough healthy food so they have strong and healthy bodies. The right to health means that children must be allowed to grow in a safe, clean environment so they can become healthy adults. They must be cared for when they're sick or injured. The right to water means children have the right to safe drinking water and a clean environment with proper toilet facilities. The right to identity means every child must be officially recognised as a human being with human rights. It also means every child has the right to a name and nationality and to know who his or her relatives are. Children also have the right to have an opinion and to tell people their views in a respectful way. They have the right to access information and to participate in decisions which affect their lives. The right to protection is the right to live in a secure and caring environment which keeps the child safe. Each child has the right to be protected from all forms of violence, physical, or mental abuse, exploitation, and slavery. CHILD: Human dignity is a fundamental principle. CHILD: Of human rights. CHILD: Which means that all people. CHILD: Without discrimination. CHILD: Deserve to be respected. CHILD: Because they're human beings. CHILD: It doesn't matter what age you are. CHILD: Or where you're from. CHILD: It doesn't matter what religion you are. CHILD: It doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl. CHILD: All individual deserve respect. CHILD: And have the same rights. CHILD: So where do these rights come from? NARRATOR: Well, we are born with these rights because we are human. These rights are the things we must have so that we can live a healthy and peaceful life everywhere in the world. Our human rights were written down for the first time in 1945 in a document called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Governments across the world realised that there was a need to give special attention to the rights of children. So in 1989, governments adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, popularly known as CRC. This convention guides governments and all citizens young and old on what the human rights mean for children and what should be done so that children can enjoy these rights. By signing the convention on the rights of the child, governments around the world promised all children these same rights. Governments have actually passed new laws to make sure people respect children's rights. But now everyone in society needs to help enforce and protect these rights from parents to educators and caregivers to children themselves. So all children, big or small, living in a village or city anywhere in the world are special in many different ways. And you all have these rights. Our rights are all connected to each other and are all equally important-- the right to live and grow, the right to eat enough healthy food, the right to drink clean water, the right to go to school, the right to learn many things, the right to receive care when you're sick, the right to be cared for by your parents or guardians, the right to have a name and belong to a country, the right to think for yourself, the right to share your ideas and be listened to, the right to practise your own religion, the right to be treated fairly by everyone, the right not to be enslaved, exploited, or do work that harms you, the right to play, the right to rest, and the right to have adults do what is best for you. Let's see how you can use these rights in your life.

Now complete Activity 1. Activity 1 Allow 15 minutes Part 1 Which of the following rights do children have? Check your answers as you go along. The UNCRC asserts children’s right to: Be free from hunger True False Be happy True False You will look in more detail as to why the answer to this question is no in Part 2 of this activity. Be protected from neglect and abuse True False Be loved by their parents True False You will look in more detail as to why the answer to this question is no in Part 2 of this activity. Health and education True False An identity True False Share their views, access information and make decisions that affect their lives True False Have friends True False You will look in more detail as to why the answer to this question is no in Part 2 of this activity. A childhood True False You will look in more detail as to why the answer to this question is no in Part 2 of this activity. Part 2 Now you have completed Part 1 of this activity, write a sentence on why you think the UNCRC does not set out unequivocally children’s right to be happy. The UNCRC is an official document that sets out legally enforceable standards. It is important to distinguish this set of legal standards with the sometimes loose way that the phrase ‘children’s rights’ is used to refer, for instance, to a child’s ‘right to a childhood’ or to loving parents. There is an important difference between ‘rights’ and ‘wants’ and it is essential to differentiate between the desire for children’s well-being and the legal responsibility to enforce this. It is possible to say, for example, that a child has a right to the best possible standard of living given the circumstances they live in, but it is not meaningful to say a child has a right to a happy childhood, no matter how desirable this might be. As lawyer Jack Donnelly (2003, pp. 10–11) argues: We do not have human rights to all things that are good, or even all important good things. For example, we are not entitled – do not have (human) rights – to love, charity or compassion. Parents who abuse the trust of children wreak havoc with millions of lives every day. We do not, however, have a human right to loving, supportive parents. In fact, to recognize such a right would transform family relations in ways that many people would find unappealing or even destructive. The fundamental principle behind the UNCRC is stated in Article 3, which reads: In all actions concerning children … the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration (Unicef, no date) However, when drafting the Convention its authors were very careful not to set up rights to something that is legally meaningless. The preamble to the UNCRC states an ideal and recognises that in a perfect world all children would grow up in ‘an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding’ but that this is not, and never can be, a legally enforceable standard and no government or organisation can ensure that children are happy. Although it is desirable to want children to be happy, have good friends and be loved by their parents, there is no right to any of these things. Next you’ll look at the principles behind the UNCRC in more detail.

Figure 3 Children have the right to be heard Children in red shirts and holding signs which read ‘My Voice Matters’ and ‘Raise your Voice’ at the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech, August 24, 2013, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

The UNCRC contains 54 articles which detail children’s rights to: provision (for basic needs such as food and housing); protection (from abuse, from degrading punishment or arrest without a proper judicial process); and participation (to express their views on all matters that affect them and have those views taken seriously). In the next activity you will read a simplified version of the UNCRC. Activity 2 Allow 30 minutes First read a simplified version of the UNCRC (open the link in a new tab or window by holding down Ctrl (or Cmd on a Mac)). Then, when you have read it through, fill in the gaps in the table below. To do this you should identify which article of the UNCRC corresponds to which right, before deciding the category – provision, protection or participation – it refers to. The first row is filled in for you as an example. Table 1 The 3 Ps in the UNCRC

Article	Right	Category
24	Health care	Provision
	Play
28
32		Protection
	Right to express views and have them taken seriously	Participation
	Right to freedom of religion
19		Protection
34
13

Table 1 The 3 Ps in the UNCRC (completed)

Article	Right	Category
24	Health care	Provision
31	Play	Provision
28	Education	Provision
32	Protection from economic exploitation	Protection
12	Right to express views and have them taken seriously	Participation
14	Right to freedom of religion	Participation
19	Protection from abuse and neglect	Protection
34	Protection from sexual exploitation	Protection
13	Right to information	Participation

The UNCRC is the most ratified convention in the history of the United Nations, ratified by every country in the world except the USA. Since its adoption, there have also been supplementary conventions and protocols adopted which include provision for especially vulnerable children. These include the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (2002) and The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (2002). It is important to remember, however, that the UNCRC is not a blue-print of practical policy but a set of guiding principles of what children need to ensure their best interests. Unfortunately, despite the almost universal adoption of children’s rights, many children and young people throughout the world continue to suffer. Today, children and young people are still subject to danger from malnutrition and starvation, inadequate water, lack of access to health care, slavery, prostitution, pornography, torture, racism, sexism, and armed conflicts. Poverty and inequality are all still prevalent across the globe and make the implementation of children’s rights extremely hard. Globally 17,000 children still die every day and 61,000 million children are out of school and not receiving an education. Social justice for children, and for poorer children in particular, is still a very long way off – whatever the legislation in place – and intergenerational inequalities intersect with discrimination and prejudice to compound the infringements of children’s rights worldwide. Such infringements, as the next section will argue, are further worsened by environmental damage, making climate change not only an environmental calamity but also a generational crisis. Climate change is hitting the youngest and most vulnerable hardest and further infringes the already tentative rights of many children and young people.

Despite the near universal ratification of the UNCRC, children’s rights remain under threat. One recent area of concern for both policy makers and academics is the way that contemporary problems such as climate change have disproportionate impacts on children – particularly those who are poor or already vulnerable. The ways in which climate change can violate children’s rights will be the focus of this section. In 2019, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed that unless the world’s industrialised nations acted to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2030 there would be catastrophic and irreversible climate change. There is strong evidence to suggest that a failure to tackle climate change will lead to unprecedented environmental and social catastrophes, with an increase in extreme weather, flooding, droughts and heat waves, damage to ecosystems in the Amazon rainforest and Polar Regions, and rising sea levels. The climate crisis has also led to social unrest – 2019 was characterised by mass protests in major cities throughout the world calling on governments to act before it is too late.

Figure 4 Children are being used as symbols of the future Cartoon image of a young activist standing on top of the Earth, holding a red heart. The text on the image says ‘Our future is in your hands’.

Children and young people have been at the forefront of many campaigns and movements against climate change and environmental damage for several reasons. They have been used as symbols of the future and representatives of the next generation, as well as the inheritors of the problems caused by decisions made before they were born. In 2016, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in France to sign the Paris Agreement. As he came up to sign the agreement he carried his young granddaughter to the podium to remind the audience of the importance of the treaty to future generations. While the symbolism of this was a little obvious (The Daily Mail responded, ‘OK, Mr. Kerry, We Get It—It’s for the Children’, quoted in Cocco-Klein and Mauger, 2018, p. 90), it underlined the point that it is today’s children who will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change in the future. They will be living with the impacts of decisions made decades ago and will be living in a world with vastly different weather, coastlines and environments than those of today. Their rights are being violated by climate change in myriad ways – these will be examined in the next section.

Increasingly, climate change is being understood as an infringement of children’s rights because children are disproportionately affected by climate change. Climate change violates their rights under the UNCRC and impacts them both now and in their future lives.

Figure 5 Children are being disproportionately affected by climate change Girl in Jakarta, Indonesia, holding up a poster while standing on landfill. The poster reads ‘Save our planet’.

Looking at climate change in this way shifts the emphasis away from technological solutions to environmental problems and instead looks at climate change in terms of the impacts it has on children. In Activity 3 you will explore how children’s rights are being violated as a result of climate change. Activity 3 Allow 15 minutes Use the drop-down options to complete the sentences below by matching the correct UNCRC article number with the wording extracted from the full article. You should use the simplified version of the UNCRC to help (open the link in a new tab or window by holding down Ctrl (or Cmd on a Mac)). There are many other ways in which children’s rights are being violated through climate change. For example, climate change increases food insecurity; for the millions of children who rely on seafood as their main source of protein (and family income), warmer or more acidic waters are destroying food chains and make having a balanced diet harder. Moreover, weather extremes such as long term drought are leading to reservoirs drying up and glaciers melting, thereby endangering clean drinking water supplies. Conversely increased rain is causing flooding and disrupting farming, as well as having less obvious consequences, such as lowering indoor air quality with mould and fungi damaging indoor atmospheres (Osterloff, 2020). These changes affect everyone but they are compounded by the pre-existing vulnerability of many children, in particular those that are living in poverty. For example, children in poverty have worse health than their wealthier counterparts and are more susceptible to malnutrition and food scarcity. They live on the worst land, which is less able to withstand the impacts of high winds, flooding and soil erosion, particularly as their homes are likely to be flimsier and their communities more physically and psychologically fragile. While these problems affect both adults and children, children’s physical and social vulnerability and dependence on adults means that poor children’s rights are at greatest risk in the face of climate change. Acknowledging these inequalities means looking at climate change as a problem of social injustice, as well as ecological degradation. Increasingly, young activists are framing climate change in terms of social justice and intergenerational equality and this will be the focus of the next section.

Climate change is something that affects different people in different ways. Those living in countries close to sea level, for example, will be affected differently to those in cities. It is estimated that approximately 190 million people currently live in areas that are expected to be under high tide levels by 2100. This will cause massive displacements of populations, and nations like Tuvalu or the Maldives could disappear altogether (Osterloff, 2020). For those in cities, temperature change could make living there unbearable and those who are poor and cannot afford air conditioning, or who live in substandard or poorly ventilated houses, will suffer health problems from the heat. Climate change does not affect everyone equally therefore and, as suggested in the previous section, it both illuminates and increases inequality and injustice. For this reason, many protestors prefer not to talk about the need to combat climate change but about the need to ensure climate justice. In using this term, activists frame global warming and climate change in terms of human rights and emphasise the critical point that those who are least responsible for climate change – including children – are the ones who suffer its most significant consequences. In order to examine the ideas of social justice and intergenerational inequality more fully, firstly it is important to define these terms. According to Mary Robinson, the Former Irish president, the notion of climate justice: insists on a shift from a discourse on greenhouse gases and melting ice caps into a civil rights movement with the people and communities most vulnerable to climate impacts at its heart. Now, thanks to the recent marches, strikes and protests by hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, we have begun to understand the intergenerational injustice of climate change. (Quoted in United Nations, 2019) Robinson has also stressed the importance of intergenerational partnerships where young people are seen as ‘means of implementation’ and ‘creators of opportunities’ and not just beneficiaries.

Figure 6 Young climate change protesters in Prague, Czech Republic, November 2019 A photograph of young climate change protesters. The photo focuses on a girl holding up a placard which reads: ‘ You’ll die of old age. We’ll die of climate change’.

Such a shift in thinking has led to children and young people becoming activists and political leaders. No longer prepared to be only passive or mute symbols of the future, children and young people are now campaigning for climate justice for their own and future generations. Rather than waiting passively for adults to ensure their rights to protection and provision, children and young people are taking their rights to participation seriously (discussed in Section 1) and demanding to be included in and consulted about decisions which affect them. High profile campaigners such as Alexandria Villasenor in the USA or Aditya Mukarji in India have become important and listened-to campaigners urging governments to take the crisis seriously, organising school strikes and starting campaigns to limit plastic waste (Unigwe, 2019). Most famous of all campaigners is Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. In 2019, the then 16-year-old addressed the climate summit at the United Nations in New York and demanded that climate change be seen specifically as a children’s problem and as an infringement of their rights. She denounced the leaders in the room: This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! ...You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you. (Thunberg, 2019)

Figure 7 Climate activist Greta Thunberg demonstrating against climate change in Stockholm Climate activist Greta Thunberg sitting outside with other young people around her.

A few hours after making this speech, Thunberg and 14 other young activists attempted to persuade the United Nations to classify the climate crisis as a children’s rights crisis. They did this by filing a lawsuit suing five of the world’s major carbon polluters – Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey – for failing to uphold their rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The high profile of campaigners such as Greta Thunberg has positioned children and young people at the forefront of climate change activism. The extensive coverage they are being given in the media has led many to ask whether this generation of young are particularly environmentally conscious. You will consider this question in the next activity. Activity 4 Allow 15 minutes In the following audio you will hear an interview between Heather Montgomery of the Open University and Peter Kraftl who is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Birmingham. Peter has worked extensively on children and the environment. In this interview he discusses the question of whether young people are particularly environmentally conscious and how this might differ cross-culturally.

Figure 8 Professor Peter Kraftl, Birmingham University

Listen to the interview, then, once you have finished, answer the questions below. HEATHER MONTGOMERY Hello, I'm here today with Peter Kraftl from the University of Birmingham. We're going to be talking about children and environments. I find all this so interesting because, of course, we're in 2019 now. We've had all the school strikes this year on school children working, walking out of school on Friday. We've got this very strong sense that children are, in many ways, children and young people, are more environmentally conscious than adults. But do you think that young people are particularly environmentally conscious? PETER KRAFTL Yes, I do and I say that with just a little bit of hesitation because I think that's quite a complex question. I think they certainly are environmentally conscious in terms of the big issues. I wouldn't necessarily say that there are any more environmentally conscious than, perhaps, the previous generation of young people who are now in their 20s, 30s, and perhaps 40s, simply because debates about the environment had been raging since the 1980s when we really first started talking about environmental change and global warming and collecting evidence for it. I don't know whether it's partly the the rise of social media, but also just the sheer high profile of these debates which really means that they are now on the agenda, perhaps, more so than ever before and we're talking about young people's activism. But again, of course, young people have been active and engaged in climate related activism and other forms of protest and awareness raising for some years. I think the other thing that I would like to point to, and this relates to some work that I've done outside the UK in Brazil, is that the ways in which children, young people, as part of their societies and their local communities, relate to the environment does vary with place. So the climate strikes are one expression of children's environmental consciousness, but the work that we've done in Brazil where we've looked at children's understandings of food, water, and energy as different resources, has shown us that children there have a really rich and detailed understanding of the environment, but they learn about the environment in different ways and perhaps they express that environmental knowledge in different ways. And in particular there, we found that they express it in terms of questions of social justice and class related inequalities and not necessarily always in terms of the generational debates that have characterised the climate strikes. HEATHER MONTGOMERY Thank you. I think that's a very, very important point to make that it's often, it's not children in the West who are necessarily suffering the worst impacts of climate change at the moment. It is children elsewhere and who have a very different relationship with the environment. And I think sometimes we do concentrate a bit too much on the Western activists, as opposed to the young people in other places. And I think that's very important to keep in mind. So thank you for that. PETER KRAFTL That's right. And I would also say that we need to think about who is involved in the climate strikes and whether they represent all young people from all segments of society. And they are fairly broad, but there have been questions raised about whether, for instance, some of the main protagonists of the climate strikes are mainly from white, more privileged backgrounds, and whether that's always the case in all of the protests. So there are ongoing questions not only about different places, but about the diversity of who is actually represented in those forms of climate action. HEATHER MONTGOMERY Yes, indeed. Lots of food for thought there. Thank you very much for talking to us today, Peter. PETER KRAFTL Thank you. 1. Today’s young people are the first generation to realise the catastrophic effects of environmental damage. True False 2. Environmental issues have been a social concern for several decades. True False 3. Young people’s activism around climate change is more visible than before. True False 4. Children in Brazil are more interested in debates around generational inequalities than their Western counterparts. True False 5. Children in Brazil have a really rich and detailed understanding of the environment, but they learn about the environment in different ways and express that environmental knowledge in terms of questions of social justice and class related inequalities. True False 6. Children in the West suffer from the impacts of climate change much more than those elsewhere. True False 7. Many young climate activists tend to be white and privileged and some have expressed concerns that this might obscure the concerns and actions of poorer children outside the West True False While Peter Kraftl discusses the prominence of this generation in contemporary debates, he is cautious about claiming this as an entirely new phenomenon and argues that young people have always been activists and campaigned alongside other, older people. However, he does see today’s protestors as particularly visible and acknowledges that they have been at the forefront of many recent climate protests, highlighting the inter-generational aspects of the climate change debate. The following section will further draw on Peter’s research interests, which focus more broadly on children’s relationship with the environment

It is evident from all the reasons discussed in this course so far that children’s environments are changing and that, for some children, such changes are disastrous and will have extremely damaging consequences on their lives. Geographers have long looked at the interrelationships between people and their environments and how they change in relation to each other. More recently, some human geographers have started to focus specifically on childhood. ‘Children’s geographies’ is a fast growing and vibrant sub-field of geography and at the forefront of thinking in this new field is Professor Peter Kraftl from Birmingham University, who you came across in the previous section. In the sections that follow you will read extracts from a chapter written by Peter Kraftl. The chapter, which accompanies the Open University module E232 Exploring Childhood and Youth, has been specially commissioned by The Open University and examines how children have responded to their changing environments, including climate change, and how this differs in different places.

Figure 9 Climate change is having a profound effect on the environment Little plant in dried, cracked mud against a background of city skyline.

Children’s relationship with the environment is complex. In his work, Kraftl discusses this relationship and specifically looks at how children’s experiences of environmental change will be very different depending on their physical location and environmental circumstances. To explore this idea in more detail in the activity that follows you will read the example of Murilo, a Brazilian boy, whose daily life is characterised by adaptation to environmental change. His life is compared to children in the West and to adults’ fears about children losing their connections to nature.

Figure 10 How children experience environmental change depends on their circumstances Child in protective mask using a laptop on whilst sitting on a street kerb.

Activity 5 Allow 30 minutes Read Changing environments - Taubaté, São Paulo State, Brazil, then answer the following two questions. 1. Which of the following did Murilo learn from his experiments? Fill in the blanks using the drop down menus. 2. Have children lost their connectedness with nature? Which of the following are seen as evidence that children in the Global North have lost their ‘connectedness’ with ‘nature’? Select all that apply. Children have been rendered less knowledgeable about their (local) environment Children no longer know the sources of their food Children are more likely to take part in school strikes Children are becoming more vulnerable to physiological and psychological illnesses In this reading Peter Kraftl is asking you to look more broadly at the relationship between children and the environment. Campaigns and school strikes against climate change – while receiving a great a deal of attention in the Western media – are, as you have read, a small part of the whole. Through examples of children such as Murilo, you can see how nuanced children’s relationships with the environment are and the very different ways in which they react to climate change depending on where and in what circumstances they live in.

The concept of the nexus and its use in contemporary social science is something Kraftl uses to explore children’s experiences of environmental change in different places. By nexus, Kraftl means the relationships and interconnectedness between things and people. In the reading that follows in Activity 6 he uses the word nexus to emphasise the interconnectedness of everything. Activity 6 Allow 30 minutes Read Changing environments - Resources, interconnectedness and nexus thinking by Kraftl, then answer the following two questions. In less than 50 words, write a sentence on the value of ‘nexus’ thinking. Nexus thinking allows scholars to understand complex, mutual and interdependent systems, as well as the inter‐connections between resource sectors, such as water, energy and food that had previously been investigated separately. Complete the following sentence in your own words:A nexus framework offers an opportunity to… A nexus framework offers an opportunity to look at how different environmental challenges matter to children, in any time and place. The concept of nexus may seem an unnecessarily complex one which academics use to describe the commonplace. However, its use emphasises the complexity and interrelatedness of different aspects of children’s lives. It highlights how children are connected to the whole ecosystem and to wider networks of food production, water distribution or fuel consumption.

In Section 3 you looked at the different forms of action taken by children campaigning for climate justice, such as the wave of school strikes that affected many countries in 2019. In this section, by drawing on the work of Kraftl once more, you will consider why young people have had such an impact in these campaigns and what they have brought to contemporary debates. Activity 7 Allow 30 minutes Read Changing environments - Taking environmental action, then answer the following two questions. 1. In 2019 there were a series of school strikes. What were they and what did they seek to achieve? The school strikes were weekly protests led by school children against climate change. They sought to pressure the government into acting against further climate damage. 2. List at least three reasons why the climate strikes offer a notable example of youth action. Answers could include: They are on a global scale They have made effective use of social media to mobilise and visualise the collective protest. They have particular emotional and political overtones, which challenges the notion of children as vulnerable or innocent. They have been highly effective, challenging and even threatening adult authority. Peter Kraftl has warned against over-romanticising children’s actions and viewing this generation as the first to care about the environment. Nevertheless, there is something unique about the visibility and action of today’s young people.

While climate change – its impact on the earth’s temperature and the subsequent consequences of that – has been the focus of protests by young activists such as Greta Thunberg, other young people have focused their protests and campaigns on other forms of environmental damage. An obvious example of environmental damage is the use of single-use plastics by richer countries of the world. Images of marine life swallowing and choking on plastics have been hugely influential and have come to symbolise the damage done to the ocean environment by human carelessness and poor stewardship of the natural world. These have drawn significant responses from young people. In India, for example, 14-year-old student Aditya Mukarji launched a campaign against plastic straws after seeing a video of two vets trying to remove a plastic straw from a turtle’s nose. Since 2018 when he first started to campaign, Aditya has helped replace more than 500,000 plastic straws in restaurants and hotels. In the next activity you will explore the impact of plastics on children’s lives in more detail.

Figure 11 Young environmental activists are also campaigning to reduce the use of single-use plastics. Young boy on beach with a washed up plastic bottle

Activity 8 Allow 15 minutes Earlier in this course you heard Peter Kraftl talk about children and young people’s environmental activism. In the audio that follows you will hear him talk about the research he carried out between 2018 and 2020 as a Leverhulme Research Fellowship on a project called ‘Plastic childhoods’. This phrase ‘plastic childhoods’ immediately conjures up images of damage and waste but in his research Kraftl focuses on the wider, and more nuanced, impacts of plastics on children’s lives. He focuses on the different ways in which plastics appear, travel through and disappear in children's lives, and also considers the ways in which plastics evade human control and how they appear in the environment at many different scales from the global right down to the microscopic and the nanoscopic. In his research, Kraftl argues that while children often express hostility towards plastic waste and want to see an end to it, they also acknowledge plastics can be useful and necessary and it is too simplistic to ban all plastics from children’s lives. He emphasises the importance of listening to children’s views and allowing them to develop their own ideas about how they wish to use plastics Listen to the audio then answer the question that follows. HEATHER MONTGOMERY Hello, I'm here today with Peter Kraftl from the University of Birmingham. And in particular, we're going to talk about what sounds like an absolutely fascinating project that Peter's involved in at the moment or leading on at the moment called Plastic Childhoods. Peter, could you start just by telling us what the phrase "plastic childhoods" means? PETER KRAFTL I'd been wanting, for some years, to put together a project about children and plastics and to do so in a way that wasn't necessarily just focusing on the negative. So it was also focusing on, for instance, the ways in which for some children, some plastics are vital parts of their lives, even though childhoods are often seen as quite artificial and plastic, especially in the Western world. So I was interested, for instance, are there toys that children think are really actually very, really quite crucial to their identities or are there prosthetic limbs or their use in glasses or hearing aids or other things that we, in our modern world, couldn't do without. HEATHER MONTGOMERY And I know the project isn't finished yet, but can you tell me something about your findings so far on it? PETER KRAFTL Yes, I think it's probably helpful first just to talk a little bit about the methods that I've used in the project and then to say something about the findings. So the project is split into two. The first is a social media analysis, where we looked at Twitter and eBay. And in both cases, we used an API, which is a programming interface, which enabled us to harvest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of tweets. And then secondly, there was a programme of work in a local school in Birmingham, which involved a number of workshops. Those were interactive workshops which were partly about learning around issues related to plastics, but also enabled us to undertake a novel programme of testing, of bio sampling, whereby we tested children, young people, both for the presence of plastics and other materials in their breath and urine and worked with them to train them to take soil and tap water samples to look at the content of those samples. In the latter, we fortunately didn't find any plastics in children's breath and urine. Had we done so that would have indicated a problem particularly with their kidneys. So that was a relief. But we did find plastics in some of the soil and also in the water. And those are mainly what we call macro plastics, visible plastics, and that really kind of conforms with what we already know about the presence of plastics in tap water and elsewhere. But just as interestingly, I was interested in the entanglement of plastics and other materials. So, for instance, we found levels of titanium and aluminium and other elements and metals, not necessarily at dangerous levels, but certainly indicating that they've been produced either by industry, by local industries, including power generation and brick works. But also these are materials that are present in the microscopic or nanoscopic form in suncream, in a range of clothing, and other places, and in products directly targeted at children and young people. HEATHER MONTGOMERY And have you been able to ask children and young people, themselves, about the impacts of plastics on their lives? PETER KRAFTL Yes. So the workshops enabled us to do that as well as interviews that we did after we use the app with the young people. I think the first thing to say is that the people who took part opted in to the research at the school that they were attending. And surprisingly, for that reason, were acutely aware of many issues around plastics. And it's in some cases, far more knowledgeable than we were about both the effects of plastics and the material properties of different kinds of plastics. But we actually spent a long time sort of talking through those and talking through their perceptions of those plastics. And interestingly, given the aims of the project, they were generally very anti-plastics. So some of what we did was actually asking them to critically consider some of their preconceived opinions about plastics and their usefulness. And one of the fun ways we did that was to create what we called a plastic totem poles where we worked with some local artists who had sourced all kinds of plastic stuff from skips and secondhand stores and so on and actually made some totem poles and got the children to think in a different way about how they related to plastics, their use value, their aesthetics, and so on. The other thing that we did after the app was to create a kind of map and then put out some photographs that the children had taken through the mobile phone app. And we ask them to talk in a lot more detail about their use of certain plastics, whether it's packaging, whether it was plastics that they'd used in making slime or in other toys, or whether it was the kind of plastics they just relied on or came across in their everyday environments. So we've got a wealth of really detailed information both about how they were using plastics and where they use those plastics. Which of the following statements is not true? Plastics can be used both negatively and positively in children’s lives The project used many different methods, including biological sampling and social media Plastics pose no risk to children Plastics, and their impacts on the environment, are a source of concern to many children. While many of us might have a rather simplistic reaction to the idea of plastic childhoods – and think about the large amount of plastic waste we accumulated as children or our children accumulate – Kraftl’s work goes beyond this. He looks at the ways ‘micro’ plastics enter children’s bodies as well as how the ‘macro’ plastic waste in the ocean affects children. His work draws on human geography, anthropology and sociology, and also on children’s own views and ideas and the ways they differentiate between good and bad plastic.

You will now look at a different – and possibly counter-intuitive – way of understanding contemporary childhoods. Kraftl, in the final section of his chapter, which forms the reading for Activity 9, suggests the need to ‘decentre’ childhood in order to understand it better. Rather than focus directly on childhood as Childhood and Youth Studies has always tried to, it may be better, he argues, to look at the relationships and interconnectedness of things around children. Kraftl bases this idea on the example of a totem pole made out of plastic waste by some of the young people he has worked with. He discusses how the children and young people used plastic to transform their ideas about waste and turn rubbish into art. Using this example, Kraftl discusses how children can transform plastic and use it to shape their thinking. In doing so he shows how children’s thinking can be critical, nuanced and considered. Activity 9 Allow 30 minutes Read Changing environments - Thinking materially: children, non-humans and Common Worlds, then answer the following three questions. 1. Fill in the following words from the drop down menus. 2. What was the purpose of the totem poles Kraftl talks about? Was it to: Unsettle the students and make them think differently about plastics? Function as an anti-litter campaign? Raise money for charity by buying things in charity shops? Shame the children’s parents into buying fewer plastic toys? 3. How did making the totem pole challenge students’ thinking? It acknowledged the lives of the plastics and made students think about where they had come from and why. It transformed waste into something with value. It asked students to think of both the positives and negatives of using plastics. The Plastic childhoods project examines the many different ways in which plastics appear, travel through and also disappear in children's lives. It also acknowledges how concerned children are about plastics but how there is a need for a more nuanced understanding about them – not all plastics are ‘bad’, some are useful and many can be transformed by being recycled into art or other forms. The value of Kraftl’s work, and of Childhood and Youth studies more generally, is that it shows the nuances of young people’s thinking, their ability to engage critically with global problems and take action on behalf of their generation and future generations. Children and young people are not only demanding an end to current environmental policies but are demanding justice: justice for themselves and future generations, justice for the non-humans creatures in the sea and in the forests and a fairer redistribution of the risks and benefits inherent in the global economic system.

Now you have completed this course on Climate justice for the next generation, have a go at the end-of-course quiz to test your knowledge. End-of-course quiz Allow 30 minutes 1. UNCRC stands for: Universal Notions of Child Rescue and Care Unlimited National Concern for Rescued Children Unified National Council on Remembering Childhood United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 2. The UNCRC has been ratified by every country in the world except one. Which one is it ? Somalia USA UK Norway 3. 4. The fundamental principle behind the UNCRC is that the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration. True or false? True False 5. Climate change is a children’s rights crisis because: It only concerns children and adults are unaffected Climate justice affects adults and climate change affects children It violates children’s rights under the UNCRC Children are more naturally environmentally sensitive. 6. Which of the following are quotes from Greta Thunberg? Tick all that apply. ‘If I have children or grandchildren, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you, the people who were around back in 2018. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there still was time to act.’ ‘I will never leave Sweden again until the climate change emergency is over.’ ‘You are failing us. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.’ ‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.’ ‘We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.’ ‘The world is doomed.’ 7. Tick all that apply. Nexus is: An oil company A way of understanding the interconnectedness of children and the environment An NGO dedicated to reversing climate change A way of understanding the different lenses researchers use to look at children and the environment. 8. Answer True or False to the following statements.Children and young people generally aren’t very interested in the role of plastics in their lives. True False Bio sampling of young people’s breath and urine revealed high levels of plastics in their bodies. True False Bio sampling of young people’s breath and urine revealed small amounts of titanium and aluminium levels in their bodies. True False Chemicals in children’s bodies may have come from local industries but they are also found in products directly targeted at children including sunscreen. True False In this course you have considered children’s relationship to the environment and climate change by focusing on the issue of climate justice and children’s rights in this and future generations.

Figure 12 Children’s futures are threatened by pollution A young child playing on a polluted beach

You began by discussing the importance of children’s rights in understanding contemporary childhoods and looked in detail at the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). You then went on to look at the disproportionate impacts of climate change on children in general and poor children in particular, before considering why children and young people have been at the forefront of climate change campaigns. In Section 4, you turned to the work of Peter Kraftl in order to discuss the relationship and interconnectedness of children and the environment. Finally this course looked at an emerging issue in childhood studies – the role of plastics in children’s lives and how they understand and respond to the changes that plastics bring. This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course E232 Exploring childhood and youth. If you’ve enjoyed this OpenLearn free course, you might also like to study the courses below: Children’s experiences with digital technologies Childhood in crisis Childhood in the digital age Children’s rights Cocco-Klein, S. and Mauger, B. (2018) Children's Leadership on Climate Change: What Can We Learn from Child-Led Initiatives in the U.S. and the Pacific Islands? Children, Youth and Environments, 28: 1, pp. 90–103. Donnelly, J. (2003) Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice. 2nd edition. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press Kraftl, P. (2020) ‘Plastic Childhoods’, in V. Cooper and N. Holford (eds) Exploring Childhood and Youth. London: Routledge. Osterloff, E. (2020) What is climate change and why does it matter. London: Natural History Museum. Available at: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-climate-change-why-does-it-matter.html (Accessed: 18 May 2020) Thunberg, G. (2019) Transcript: Greta Thunberg's Speech at The U.N. Climate Action Summit. Available at: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit (Accessed 18th March 2020). Unicef (no date) The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Available at https://downloads.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/UNCRC_united_nations_convention_on_the_rights_of_the_child.pdf?_ga=2.81827862.1279594945.1589812131-1578153154.1586609524 (Accessed: 28 May 2020). Unigwe, C. (2019) It’s not just Greta Thunberg: why are we ignoring the developing world’s inspiring activists? The Observer, 5th October, 2019. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/05/greta-thunberg-developing-world-activists Accessed 18th March 2020 United Nations (2019) Climate Justice, blog May 2019, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/climate-justice/Climate Justice Accessed 18th March 2020 University of Minnesota Human Rights Library (no date) Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924, adopted Sept. 26, 1924, League of Nations O.J. Spec. Supp. 21, at 43 (1924). Available at: http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/childrights.html (Accessed: 28 May 2020). O'Brien, K., E. Selboe, and B. M. Hayward. 2018. Exploring youth activism on climate change: dutiful, disruptive, and dangerous dissent. Ecology and Society 23(3):42. Available for free download at https://ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss3/art42/ Fenton-Glynn, C. (2019) Children's Rights and Sustainable Development: Interpreting the UNCRC for Future Generations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Phoenix, A. Boddy, J. Walker, C and Vennam, U. (2017) Environment in the Lives of Children and Families: Perspectives from India and the UK. Bristol: Policy Press Thunberg, G. (2019) No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference. London: Penguin. This free course was written by Heather Montgomery. It was first published in June 2020. Images Course image: JurgaR / iStock Figure 1: Ben Gingell / 123RF Figure 2: Rightsholder unknown / public domain Figure 3: Visions of America LLC / 123RF Figure 4: Design / 123RF Figure 5: ximagination / 123RF Figure 6: © JaCrispy | Dreamstime.com Figure 7: Liv Oeian / 123RF Figure 8: Dr Sophie Hadfield-Hill Figure 9: amphotora / iStock Figure 10 © Lightfieldstudiosprod | Dreamstime.com Activity 6, Image of Campos do Jordão: Peter Kraftl Activity 7, Image of girl and global climate change strike: Markus Spiske / Flickr. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Figure 11: © Kengwin2 | Dreamstime.com Activity 9, Image of Totem Pole: Peter Kraftl Figure 12: lily oh / 123RF Video Video 1: Courtesy of Impact(Ed) International Text Activity 2: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children, https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/global/reports/uncrc-child-friendly-version1.pdf, Save The Children. The Plastic Childhoods project led by Peter Kraftl was funded by The Leverhulme Trust (RF-2018-211\7). Peter Kraftl’s work on The Brazilian-based nexus research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K00932X/1) and Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP process 15/50226‐0). Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence. The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course: Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. Don't miss out If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open University – www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses.

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