Our Children Will Fight for the Climate: How Congo-Basin Writers Prophesied Global Youth Climate Activism 1

ABSTRACT

According to Riikka Paloniemi and Annukka Vainio (2011), as early as 1992, the United Nations in its international programme dubbed Agenda 21 asserted that young people, who constitute about 30 percent of the world's population, are important stakeholders in achieving sustainable development (398-399). Much momentum has accumulated in the direction of youth activism for the climate and environment. Besides garnering much recognition from the international community as important actors in climate change policy and action, youth-led climate commitment has continued to grow in leaps and bounds. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, this movement mobilized millions of school-going children/youths across many cities throughout the world to skip classes on Fridays and protest, asking their governments and corporate bodies to concretely address the global climate and environmental crises and save their future.2 Greta Thunberg has spoken to world leaders on the need to curb carbon emissions and has addressed the issue of climate change at many high-level gatherings, including COP24, which was held from in December 2018 in Katowice, Poland;the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2019 and 2020;the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Commission in February 2019;an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican in April 2019;and the UK Parliament in Westminster, also in April 2019. [...]the School Strikes for Climate movement has not only caused the resignation of Belgian Environment Minister Joke Schauvliege (who had falsely claimed that children's climate protests were 'set-up') but has also been positively received by key global figures such as UN Secretary General António Guterres, who, following an unprecedented turnout of approximately 1.4 million young protesters in over 120 countries on 15th March 2019, remarked that "the climate strikers should inspire us all to act at the next UN summit".3 Moreover, on 12th April 2019, having witnessed the massive turnout of young protesters the month before, twenty-two renowned scientists across the globe published a letter in the journal Science acknowledging that "the concerns of young protesters are justified" and pledging their support for the youth strikes for climate (Hagedorn et al. 2019, 139-140).