Many of the most sweeping social movements throughout history have been youth-led, including those related to environmental challenges. Emerging research suggests youth can build environmental concern among parents via intergenerational learning, in some cases overcoming socio-ideological differences that normally stymie attempts at collective action. What has not been studied is the potential for youth to also influence adults outside their immediate families. This study based in North Carolina, USA, explores the potential of today's young people as environmental change-agents in their communities on the topic of marine debris. Specifically, this evaluation examines responses from voters and local officials after participating in youth-led civic engagement events. After engaging with a youth-led civic engagement event, voters, and local officials completed a retrospective pretest survey that asked questions about levels of marine debris concern and their likelihood of supporting a local marine debris ordinance. Young people encouraged both concern and policy support among both voters and officials, and that concern and policy support increased independently of whether adults were voters or officials, liberals or conservatives, or knew the students personally. Further, participation in the youth-led engagement event reduced political differences in marine debris concern. This study suggests youth can play a critical role addressing marine debris challenges by promoting support for marine debris management policy, and doing so across political barriers.
This perspective article is divided between the account of an emerging youth political activist, Katelyn Higgins, and the subsequent collaborative research project she coordinated. After 10 years of experience in youth political action, Higgins worked with co-authors to develop a qualitative study to explore the processes underlying youth influence over local environmental policymaking. We present findings from that study to supplement her perspective. The study supported fourth and fifth grade teachers by offering a marine debris curriculum which encouraged students to share their knowledge with local community members through environmental activism events. At the first event, students aged 8–10 presented at a town hall meeting; we interviewed 16 adults in attendance. The second “event” was a series of video PSAs (Public Service Announcements) in which students from across the state of North Carolina, United States, explained the harms of marine debris. Those PSAs were emailed to local officials; we conducted follow-up interviews with two officials. Four themes emerged to characterize how adults responded to youth environmental activism: young people were inspiring; adults want to support young people; and adults view young people as able to provide leadership for local action and challenge the establishment. Youth leaders and those looking to support them should be encouraged by these results, as they suggest adults, including local public officials, consider youth voices valuable and uniquely situated to foster productive political processes for addressing marine debris. Future research should continue to explore the degree to which positive feelings expressed by adults translate to action.
Policy development and subsequent action occur at all levels of government with various opportunities for input from nongovernmental organizations and individual citizens. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) mapping tools such as EJSCREEN and EnviroAtlas incorporate environmental and demographic data to inform local decision makers on issues and policies in their communities by putting data, resources, and information in the hands of citizens. However, these tools are only as powerful as their reach, especially when it comes to communities with environmental justice (EJ) concerns. In this article, we present the development of an EJ educational case study based on a collaboration between U.S. EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and Office of Research and Development (ORD) and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Through the EPA Case Study, we state the need for EJ-focused educational materials that leverage the U.S. EPA's mapping tools, describe the development and application of the EPA Case Study, and share lessons learned to help inform future EJ educational materials development. We conclude with a literature-backed call to action for continued federal support in the development of tools and educational materials to inform decision making that has the potential galvanize policy change.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.