About wtfutures

While the evidence of climate change is overwhelming, climate action is facing a backlash. This could, in part, be attributed to its failure to connect with the aspirations, but also the difficulties, of people all over the world.

Young people are not exempt, in spite of surveys telling us that their choices and actions are already largely influenced by climate issues.

This project is about listening to them; to better understand how young people in the world see the future in the context of climate change, and of the different (political, economic, cultural, social…) ways of responding to it.

To achieve this goal, we sought out, documented and interacted with past, ongoing or upcoming initiatives in which youths take time to articulate, formulate and question their experiences and interrogations regarding climate change, the responses to it, and the futures that result from them.

Via an open call as well as help from a variety of networks, we identified 54 projects in 29 countries that we were able to study in depth. We led interviews with most of them. Online, we organized three open “Agoras” where those involved in the projects could learn from one another. We are aware that many more amazing groups and projects exist across the world, and we hope to be able to do them justice in the future (if you wish to let us know about what you do, you’ll find our contact data below).

From the material published by the projects and provided by the interviews, we analyzed all the projects along three axes:

• WHAT the young people who participated in the projects had to say – this section itself subdivided into THEMES (the topics that mattered to youngsters) and TENSIONS (polar differences in vision and outlook).
• HOW the projects happened, focusing on the process, the methodologies, and the experience lived by young participants. 

Finally, we collated all these analyses and distilled them into 7 key learnings, which we labelled WOW because many of them blew our minds.

Rose Rondelez rose.rondelez@plurality-university.org

Chloé Luchs chloe.luchs@plurality-university.org

Daniel Kaplan dkaplan@plurality-university.org

Website and visual identity by Bureau Double – Juliette Lépineau and Elias Rhouzlane

Plurality University Network, 5 rue de la Vega, 75012 Paris, France.

This project was initiated and led by the Plurality University Network, with the support of the European Climate Foundation.

Teach the Future was a friend and partner from the beginning.

We are also grateful to other organizations and networks for their help in identifying people and projects across the world, as well as discussing and challenging our early results: Generation Climate Europe, School of International Futures (Soif), UNICEF Innocenti, and many more.