Youth Activism and Climate Change in Latin America: Indigenous and Peasant Youth in Defence of their Human Rights and Territories

Abstract

The objective of this policy brief is to generate public policy recommendations on the role of indigenous and peasant youth in the defence of their human rights, their territories and the actions they are carrying out to mitigate climate change in Latin America. Indeed, indigenous and peasant youth in Latin America are currently expressing a renewal in the leadership of rural social organisations, they are leading a large part of the mobilisations in defence of their territories, the environment and climate change actions, and they are the ones who have most successfully adapted to the use of new informational technologies.

For this reason, it is indigenous and peasant youth who can best assume the role of spokespersons and build bridges between academic knowledge and the traditional knowledge of these peoples and communities in order to find concrete solutions to the regional and global environmental and climate change crisis.

The current Latin American context is characterised by the global climate crisis, the advance of extractive activities and territorial disputes over natural resources.

In this scenario, young people emerge as strategic actors in activism in defence of the environment and territories that are threatened by extractive activities. They are the social actors that can change the relationship between societies and nature for future generations in order to mitigate the climate change process. Therefore, it is important to promote the participation of indigenous and rural youth on the debates regarding climate change and environmental issues at local, regional, national and global levels.