TakingITGlobal

(Tanner 2010). Youth activism is not entirely new; in Western countries like the U.S., urban youth have been actively engaged in response to different social crises over the past several decades, increasingly through use of the internet and social media (Bennett et al. 2011; Gordon 2007). Young people are, after all, predisposed to consciousness regarding social justice; they simply know when something is unfair, and are inclined to respond accordingly (Checkoway and Aldana 2013). Young people nonetheless face several barriers to civic engagement, and are often disregarded by adults in positions of power. Opportunities for youth civic engagement remain limited, due to age segregation, and negative public beliefs about adolescents—so-called adultism or age-ism (Brennan et al. 2007; Camino and Zeldin 2002). According to Checkoway (2011), youth often internalize adult portrayals of them as "problems," "troubled," and "deficient," contributing to their own disempowerment. Youth are often also distrustful of political figures and feel alienated from political processes (Corner et al. 2015). Emotions are another important factor in youth engagement with climate change, both preventing and encouraging action. Youth from university (Norgaard 2011) to elementary school (Brown 2016) may feel overwhelmed, afraid, guilty, and helpless when learning about climate change. As Norgaard (2011) points out, the individualism prominent in Western cultures can exacerbate helplessness, as an individual cannot adequately address such a systemic problem. Norgaard (2011) and Schindel (2015) both argue that the desire to avoid these troubling emotions drives people to ignore or downplay the seriousness of climate change, despite knowledge of its impacts. Youth are better able to cope with these challenging emotions if they have social support from people they trust, and positive role models who take action to address climate change (Ojala 2016; Brown 2016). Going one step further, according to Riemer and colleagues (2014), youth engagement in climate change initiatives is linked to positive outcomes, such as lower levels of delinquent behaviours; thus collective action may be the best remedy for the emotional distress caused by climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) specifically encourages youth participation in decision- making, and recognized youth as an independent stakeholder in the 1992 Rio 'Earth Summit,' which established the UNFCCC. Youth did not have an official place at the table of climate governance for another seventeen years, however, gaining constituency status as youth non- governmental organizations in 2009 (Thew 2018). While this is a notable step forward, few youth have the resources to engage in the privileged, specialized, and global UNFCCC deliberations; we still have a long way to go to include youth voices in climate decision-making from the local to the global scale. The IPCC project is one step amongst many toward observing the capacities, opportunities, and barriers to youth civic engagement in climate change. 12 | I N T R O D U C T I O N

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