“Riders on the storm
Into this house, we’re born
Into this world, we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm”
The Doors

The thousands of children, teenagers and young adults who participated in the 54 projects we surveyed in WTFutures are all different. They do not live, think, know, fear or want the same things. However, they have one thing in common: they are Climate Natives.

What do (and don’t) we mean by “climate natives”?

Taking the clue from Marc Prensky’s 2001 definition of “Digital Natives” (see box), we will define a Climate Native as a person who has grown up in a world marked by the prospect, and increasingly the reality, of anthropogenic¹ climate change and its consequences.

This does not mean that climate change is the only issue that matters to Climate Natives. As all young people, they are in a process of building their own identity and finding their place in the world as it is and as it might become. They are also concerned by other large issues such as social inequalities and, according to Youth Talks, the resurgence of war.

Being Climate Native also does not turn every living youth into a committed climate activist: indeed, some projects noticed that, having lived with climate change all their lives, some young people may have “naturalized” it, seeing it as an inevitable phenomenon and sometimes losing track of its connection to human action – therefore, possibly losing the ability to imagine any course of action apart from dealing with the consequences. Others may simply find the issue overwhelming and/or refuse to shoulder the responsibility for fighting climate change just because older generations have decided to pass it on to them. When asked by Youth Talks what they would or would not be ready to sacrifice to “build their desired futures”, they appeared “torn between the needs of the present and their desires for sustainable futures.” Sure, many elements of their everyday lives (social media, fast fashion, travel, etc.) are criticized for their contributions to climate change, but what would sacrificing them really achieve? And why didn’t their predecessors do the same?

“While family relationships, wellbeing, and physical health are the main areas in which young people are not willing to make sacrifices, material consumption (food, cars, technology, etc.), certain activities (travel, hobbies, and passions), and personal ambitions are variously cited both as aspects to sacrifice and aspects to maintain. This dichotomy highlights the difficult dilemma in which these young people find themselves.”
Youth Talks

Faced with these contradictions, some young people can become part of the current “climate backlash” – not because they are unaware of the situation, nor because they do not care, but because they also have a life to live. Understanding the complexity of climate change can also feel overwhelming, even debilitating. In some cases, it may feel easier to turn towards simpler ways to explain life and to project oneself in the future.

Finding their own place in the world, and saving the world – or at least, making sure it remains inhabitable: the challenge of reconciling these two imperatives may be key to understanding Climate Natives.

When would we date the advent of Climate Natives?

We propose 1997, the year the Kyoto Protocol was signed by all countries but three (and ratified by all but four, the U.S. having signed but not ratified). This year symbolically marks the moment from which the reality of anthropogenic climate change was acknowledged globally, at the highest level – and also, from which the gap between acknowledging its existence and acting on this knowledge became more and more visible. Of course, many voices across the globe had warned of climate change before that date; but Kyoto made it both a reality and a global priority, relayed by media, activists as well a growing number of institutions and companies – hence a constant presence in the minds of young people born after that.

There is no end date. Climate Natives are not one “climate generation”: they are all the generations born after this initial date.

What is different about Climate Natives?

What the projects surveyed by WTFutures almost unanimously tell us is that three perspectives inform the Climate Natives’s worldviews and images of the future:

1. The gradual degradation of living conditions and opportunities due to climate change: climate change is already affecting them (although not equally, depending on where they live and their social position), and it will get worse.
2. What specialists call the “polycrisis”, the perspective of a world where man-made and “natural” catastrophes, often occurring simultaneously, are a normal part of life rather than exceptions.
3. The understanding that the people in charge, whom (in many cultures) young people are encouraged to think of as role models, cannot be trusted to act on their knowledge of climate change, and in fact, often lie about it.

Again, beyond that, Climate Natives are as different from one another as people of all generations. Their concrete experiences of climate change are different. Also, they are sometimes more aware of climate change and its effects than knowledgeable about it: many projects reflect or express a need for more “climate literacy²”, which due to its systemic dimension can probably not be taught as just another subject matter (see the article Rethinking Learning). They can also be concerned with other issues besides climate change: the international Youth Talks survey puts climate change on par with war and conflicts; inequalities and discriminations; and, at least in the West, with the effects of digital technology on youth’s wellbeing. 

Climate change adds a new overarching issue without making the other ones fade away, rather compounding them. However, this has a number of consequences on Climate Native’s state of mind, vision of the future, agency, and imagination.

State of mind (and mental health)

“We’ve grown up in the climate crisis. It shapes our education, our jobs, our futures. We can’t afford to be passive—we have to make space to act, even if it’s messy.”
Net Zero and You(th)

Several surveys³, as well as many of the projects reviewed in WTFutures, point toward an extremely widespread and often crippling “eco-anxiety” – in fact a range of emotions such as anger, grief, guilt, sadness, powerlessness. Alongside other factors such as digital technology (particularly social media), eco-anxiety contributes to an also well-documented Mental Health crisis⁴ in our youth today. The Eco-anxiety Africa Project (TEAP), a youth-led initiative initiated in Nigeria, sees eco-anxiety sometimes leading to depression, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts or deeds. On a less pathological, but still significant level, the 23 young activists behind a paper titled Not About Us Without Us write: “Knowing how much unnecessary harm is being caused, we can find it difficult to engage with basic tasks such as relaxing, sleeping, studying or working. Some of us also struggle with exorbitant feelings of guilt about our carbon footprints (…), despite our understanding that the structures and systems we live in make ethical choices extremely difficult.”

Those advocating for more climate action, can no longer overlook the importance of dealing with the Climate Natives’ complex eco‑emotions.

Sense of futurity

By “sense of futurity”, we mean the ability to imagine one or several future(s), to project oneself into the future, and to take the future into consideration when making decisions and acting. The awareness of climate change severely impacts this sense of futurity. This is not an abstract concern: it has consequences on how young people think of having children or of owning things, it makes them doubt the usefulness of many of the study paths offered to them, and even brings some of them to give up promising mainstream careers.

One of the classic tools of future studies, the Futures Triangle⁵, assigns different “physical” values to the present (push), the past (weight) and the future (pull). Setting aside considerations on the decidedly Western worldview that these values express, the fact that, for a lot of Climate Natives, the future is also associated with weight, is certainly of no small consequence.

Agency

Using Nicki Lisa Cole’s definition of agency⁶ – “the power people have to think for themselves and act in ways that shape their experiences and life trajectories”, the projects surveyed by WTFutures also give us indications on how climate change adds to the difficulty that young people face in finding their place in the world. They reflect a fundamental uncertainty on what can be done both in the face of climate change, and about it:

• What can be done in the face of climate change: how to both shape one’s identity, pursue one’s aspirations, and prepare for what are likely to be more challenging environmental circumstances? One of the consequences can be seen in many projects where young people challenge current study curricula and their failure to acknowledge climate change.
• What can be done about climate change: one of the striking lessons from the projects is that those who chose to act in that area have mostly done away with the classic distinction between adaptation⁷ (to the consequences of climate change) and mitigation⁸ (slowing down or reversing climate change). One reason is that climate change is already a reality, and that any course of action needs to acknowledge this fact. Another is that the focus on policymaking has yielded disappointing results, whereas local, concrete action feels more satisfying and perhaps (not certainly) more impactful in the eyes of many (not all). Several projects also point to the intrinsic value of activism, almost regardless of its outcome, in bringing people together, creating solidarity, generating knowledge that can be used elsewhere, processing emotions, providing meaning, finding answers, and finally developing the sense of agency which, when dealing with issues on their own, many young people find themselves lacking.

Imagination

After Amitav Ghosh⁹, several authors have described climate change and the failure to address it as a “crisis of the imagination”. Looking at the projects identified during WTFutures, young people do not lack imagination. In fact, calling upon their imagination was one of the ways of overcoming the difficulty of getting some of them to talk about their eco-emotions, and/or to project themselves into a future that most of them find menacing.

This does not (yet?) mean that young people have a clearer vision than anyone else on what post-climate change or truly sustainable worlds might look like, and how we could get there. It means, however, that aside from the (however necessary) dry, technical discussions on climate policy, innovation, or investment, there is a huge untapped resource in imagination. Recognizing its importance and valuing it, particularly with young people, may be a powerful way of helping both substantive alternatives, and a stronger sense of agency, to emerge.

Earned mistrust

It is of course normal for young people to challenge legacy culture and institutions. However, the overwhelming feeling we get from most young people, that they have been let down by their elders in spite of all that was known about climate change, may signal a more serious rift. All Climate Natives do not react in the same way, of course: some express anger, which remains a way of acknowledging who they are addressing their anger to (institutions, corporations, etc.); some feel discouraged, sad or helpless, sometimes resulting in “activist burnout”; others become dismissive of existing institutions, preferring local, community, peer-to-peer action; others still are questioning the very value of (particularly democratic and/or transnational) institutions, contributing to the current, global democratic crisis¹⁰.

The Living Future Generations

Let us try to summarize the above in a simple way: Climate Natives are the living “future generations”. Those who defined sustainable development¹¹ (“meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”) probably had them in mind. But the generations whose whole life is impacted by past decisions on climate are no longer an abstraction. When they were still in the future, adults could speak in their name, then overlook them. Now, they are here. In many countries, they make up more than half of the population. Just as we cannot continue to see climate change as a challenge for the future, we cannot continue to act (or fail to) on behalf of the future generations as if the Climate Natives were not already present!

Overwhelmingly, the projects surveyed in WTFutures tell us that young people may be sad, angry or anxious about climate change and other issues, yet they are also full of energy, desire, intelligence and imagination and ready to act in ways that make sense to them. From the local to the transnational, from public institutions to corporations and NGOs, it is time to give them not one, but several seats at the tables where decisions are made, where funds are allocated,where research questions are asked. It is time to let Climate Natives begin to take care of themselves, since they will be the ones to inherit a damaged planet.

1. Caused by humans.

2. “Climate Change Literacy” can cover a wide range of subjects and forms. At its most basic, it is about awareness and understanding of the existence, the causes, and the consequences of climate change. However, depending on context and public, it can also be about deeper topics such as being prepared for extreme weather events; how climate policy is produced; how to deal with our and others’ climate-related emotions… See Climate Literacy to learn more.

3. Hickman, Caroline et al. (2021), “Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey”,  The Lancet Planetary Health, Volume 5, Issue 12

4. World Health Organization, “Children and young people’s mental health: the case for action”, 2025.

5. The Futures Triangle is a method to map forces of change and their interaction, categorizing them by their timeframe: the “push of the present”, the “pull of the future”, and the “weight of the past”. Learn more in this article.

6. Cole, Nicki Lisa. “How Sociologists Define Human Agency.” ThoughtCo. (accessed August 15, 2025)

7. Adaptation to climate change comprises adjustments in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climate impacts, in particular by reducing vulnerability and damage.

8. Mitigation of climate change refers to actions to address the causes of climate change in order to limit its magnitude, by reducing or preventing the emission of greenhouse gases, as well as enhancing or restoring sinks that absorb them.

9. Amitav Ghosh (2016), The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, The University of Chicago Press.

10.  The Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2024.

11. United Nations / World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), “Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future” (aka ‘Brundtland Report’).