Hlengiwe Radebe, Civil engagement officer, WWF South Africa

The European Union-funded WWF Youth Climate Champions Programme, which took place earlier in 2022, was very successful, said Hlengiwe Radebe, civil engagement officer at the WWF South Africa.

The programme seeks to capacitate and support young climate activists (aged 18 to 35) and facilitate collaboration on climate change issues among youth and youth organisations in South Africa.

The programme, which is set to run to 2025, was launched under the banner of the Climate Ambition to Accountability Project (CAAP), a partnership between WWF South Africa, the South African Climate Action Network and the Institute for Economic Justice, which is co-funded by the European Union.

Youth in South Africa operate at the margins of climate policy issues, and youth engagements with policymakers are “separate and fragmented”: there is a need for a more cohesive approach, Radebe said.

Also, young people lack access to resources, knowledge and expertise, and opportunities to engage with climate policy and climate policymakers, she said.

The programme is aimed at developing the next generation of climate change activists and policy participants, ensuring that they are “well capacitated” and that they push for strong youth engagement with climate policy.

It is important that young people are brought into critical conversations throughout the year and “not just on June 16” (South Africa’s Youth Day).

The programme has a steering committee, and produces a podcast, Youth Climate Champions (available on Spotify). Some of the programme participants are going to the United Nations climate change talks, commonly known as COP27, in Egypt at the end of November 2022.

In October 2022, the programme held a “youth bootcamp”, which ran from a Monday to a Friday and involved 35 participants, 75% of whom hailed from low-income communities. Initially, with the European Union funding only, there was capacity for 25 participants, but corporate sponsorship bumped up this number.

There was a 50-50 split between young people who were members of organisations, and those who were unaffiliated, Radebe said.

The programme also aims to provide young people with internships, and in 2022 three young people are serving internships in the host organisations, she said. South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission, an independent, statutory, multistakeholder body established by President Cyril Ramaphosa, has been assisting the programme, and Radebe said “there are plans with them around youth engagement”.

“We [the youth] want to be empowered to be part of the new low-carbon future, not the old, high-carbon past we are leaving behind,” Radebe said, speaking of education and skills development.

Young people need to be fully considered when “just transition” decisions are being made, she said. Just transition is a catchphrase that encompasses a range of social interventions put in place to secure workers’ rights and livelihoods when economies are shifting to an economy powered by renewable energy and moving away from a purely extractive mode to one that is more reliant on recycling and other sustainable actions.

Like communities that depend on industries that emit a large quantity of greenhouse gases and face the necessity of switching to participating in a low-carbon economy, young people also worry about job losses related to the transition to a green economy, and about the possibility of having to move away from their ancestral homes, she said.

In addition, South Africa’s ongoing electricity supply problems, where, at times, in some areas, electricity is only available for four to six hours a day, are a challenge for young people who need to study.

Radebe said young people are too often dismissed as being naive and too poorly informed to fruitfully participate in climate policy discussions. This attitude has to end, she said.

“I have a master’s degree. Most of us are well educated. Consult us meaningfully, not just in a tick-box exercise. The youth should play a critical role in the development and implementation of sustainable solutions.”