Climate Justice
Climate justice is racial justice .
Here we signpost you to black and indigenous activists working across the globe.
Their work centers race, class and gender as the frontlines of the struggle for climate justice.
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Aneesa Khan
As the executive director of SustainUS, Aneesa Khan works with other frontline youth to challenge the fossil fuel industry and demand climate justice internationally.
“Since 2014 I have been attending the UN climate conferences and every year I see the same thing – countries in the Global North not wanting to pay reparations to countries in the Global South already impacted by the climate crisis”.
Dr Adrienne Hollis
Adrienne Hollis is a scientist and environmental lawyer who serves as the lead climate justice analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, and teaches law at American University and public health at George Washington University.
Anita Okunde
Okunde is active in the UK Student Climate Network (UKSCN) – the grassroots youth climate strikes organisers in the UK. She is currently working with youth climate strikers Manchester and Fridays for Future to support digital climate actions during the global pandemic.
Anjali Raman-Middleton
Raman-Middleton is a climate activist with UKSCN. She has spoken about the Teach the Future campaign and the importance of climate education to students, teachers, and media organisations, most recently at the Children’s Media Conference and the Big Climate Teach In. She is currently setting up a London Climate Youth Network to educate and empower students about environmental and climate issues.
Aoife Mercedes Rodriguez-Uruchurtu
Rodriguez-Uruchurtu is a climate activist with the UKSCN based in Manchester, and is also involved in the COP26 Coalition.
“My activist journey began in the spring of 2019, when I started striking for climate in front of the Scottish Parliament.”
Artemisa Xakriabá
Xakriabá is an Indigenous activist in Brazil fighting Amazon rainforest fires and plans for mining on Xakriabá land.
She says, “I am a daughter of Mother Nature: taking care of her is taking care of ourselves. We will take care of Mother Nature in order to protect us – we only exist because she still exists.”
Aryaana Khan
In 2018, Khan led a youth climate retreat in the Adirondack Mountains with leaders across New York State.
She also traveled to San Francisco to interview high-level attendees at the Global Climate Action Summit, and joined the Youth Fundraising Advisory Board.
Ayisha Siddiqa
Yisha Siddiqa is co-founder and co-coordinator of Polluters Out is a global coalition of young people from 80 countries united with scientists to challenge the fossil fuel industry’s control of land. Siddiqa is also on the core team of Re-Earth Initiative. In September 2019 she helped mobilise and lead over 300,000 people onto the streets of Manhattan.
Carlos Manuel
Manuel is from the Island of Palau. He was among a group of young people from 12 countries around the world who in 2019 presented a landmark complaint to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child against government inaction on climate change. At COP25, he said that everyone had the right to enjoy the planet, but Palau families’ rights are being violated with people forced from their homes by rising sea levels.
Dominique Palmer
Dominique Palmer is an activist fighting for climate justice which is intersectional with social issues. She is part of the UKSCN, Fridays for Future International and Extinction Rebellion (XR) Youth. She is a public speaker who has spoken at events such as COP25 on environmental justice.
Elizabeth-Wanjiru-Wathuti
Elizabeth grew up in Nyeri County, a part of Kenya known for its beautiful forests. Her first act as a climate activist was planting her first tree when she was seven.
Elizabeth founded the Green Generation Initiative. Her organisation nurtures young environmental enthusiasts by greening schools, delivering environmental education and running an “adopt a tree” campaign.
Eric Terena
Terena works with Mídia Índia, the main digital channel of the Indigenous cause in Brazil. In 2019 he was part of an Indigenous delegation from Brazil touring Europe. A music producer who takes inspiration from nature and the Indigenous struggle, Terena says, “It’s time to make melody a tool for fighting”.
Erisvan Bone de Sousa Silva
“I am the founder of Mídia India – a network that makes the Indigenous struggle and resistance visible in Brazil. Since 2015 we have been using digital communication as a tool in the fight, showing the strong role for Indigenous communicators in the struggle.”
Helena Gualinga
Helena Gualinga is an Indigenous activist from Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon. At COP25, she called out world leaders for criminal negligence, and expressed her concern over the Ecuadorian government authorising oil extraction in Indigenous land.
Ishaa Asim
A Manchester Youth Strike coordinator and a member of UKSCNand Fridays For Future. Asim is currently working on a number of environmental projects, including the Green New Deal hub and the Greater Manchester Youth Combined Authority Environment group project. The latter is to hold an event on climate change and how young people can make a difference.
Isra Hirsi
Isra Hirsi is a climate and social justice activist from Minneapolis, Minnesota and is co-founder of US Youth Climate Strike. She won a Brower Youth Award for her climate activism. She is the daughter of US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. “The climate crisis,” Hirsi has said, “is the fight of my generation, and it needs to be addressed urgently.”
Jerome Foster II
Forster is the founder and executive director of One Million of Us. Foster led a climate strike outside the White House in solidarity with the second global Fridays For Future strike, which took place in May 2019. “I am committed to galvanising a new generation of outspoken leaders – this is very important to me,”
Jessica Ahmed
Ahmed is part of the UKSCN. She talks at schools and educational institutions explaining the importance of climate justice.
“I also partake in interviews where I speak of the ecological crisis and how it impacts people in the Global South.”
Joshua Virasami
Joshua Virasami is an artist, writer and political activist who organises across different struggles from housing rights to anti-racism to climate justice. He was a key organiser in both the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements and is active within Wretched of the Earth and the London Renters Union. He recently published How To Change It, available to pre-order.
Juwaria Jama
“In the past year and a half I have worked with my Minnesota climate strike team on pushing policy regarding issues like divesting from fossil fuels and investing in renewable energy.” A daughter to Somali immigrants, 16-year-old Jama spoke alongside congresswoman Ilhan Omar at the Green New Deal Minnesota climate rally in February 2019.
Kareena Birla
Birla has organised with Climate Strike Leicester, where she acted as a spokesperson. “The 100 companies causing this terrible climate disaster know us consumers, especially ones like myself from a low-income background, cannot afford an alternative, there isn’t even one. There will never be ethical consumption underneath capitalism when people and nature are disregarded.” she said in a speech in October 2019.
Karla Stephan
Karla Stephan started organising with the Washington DC student climate strikes network in 2019, when she was 14. She is now National Finance Director of Youth Climate Strike US. She says, “We plan to make climate change an essential debate topic in the 2020 election
Karen Washington
A lifelong New Yorker, Karen Washington is a farmer, activist, physical therapist and board member of the New York Botanical Garden.Through her work with Farm School, she is teaching young New Yorkers about gardening and community organizing.And, as a co-founder of Black Urban Growers, she is working with Black farmers on growing fresh, nutritious food for underserved communities.
Leah Namugerwa
Namugerwa is the Team Leader of Fridays For Future Uganda. Namugerwa is a 15-year-old climate activist advocating for a plastic bags ban in Uganda. She is also the the founder of #BirthdayTrees, which calls on people in Uganda to plant a tree to celebrate their birthday.
Litokne Kabua
Litokne Kabua is from the Marshall Islands. He was among a group of young people from 12 countries around the world who in 2019, presented a landmark complaint to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to protest government inaction on climate change. The 16-year-old urged leaders to visit the Marshall Islands to see how rising seas are destroying them.
Lola Fayokun
Fayokun is an 18-year-old youth climate striker. She is an activist with the UKSCN, the grassroots organisation which organises the youth climate strikes in the UK. Her work is focused on the Green New Deal and promoting anti-racism in the climate movement.
Louis VI
Louis VI wrote and presented a documentary called The world is (y)ours which aims to help young people of colour in Britain understand that where we live is negatively affecting where we’re from. He says the climate conversation is a conversation we should be leading. “Don’t forget this isn’t a recent thing, the destruction of the environment started with colonialism.”
Mychal Johnson
Mychal Johnson is a community organizer in the South Bronx in New York City. As the co-founder of South Bronx Unite, he is working with community members to care for a neighborhood coping with decades of pollution and neglect.
Nadia Nazar
Nadia Nazar is an artist and youth climate activist. Nazar is the co-founder, co-executive director, and art director of the This Is Zero Hour movement. In 2019 she told Vox, “Together, the youth are shaking the systems that have supported the climate crisis, including racism, patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.”
Oladosu Adenike
Oladosu grew up in Nigeria, where she is a country ambassador for Fridays for Future, Earth Uprising and African Youth Climate Hub.
“My journey into the environmental movement started when I gained admission to study agricultural economics. Though I had heard about climate change before, I only realised that we were living through a climate crisis when I started studying in an area which is one of the most vulnerable to climate change in Nigeria.
Quannah Chasinghorse
“I see my ‘activism’ work as just protecting Indigenous lands, our way of life, and my culture. Being a land and water protector is part of my identity as an Indigenous woman. I grew up really grounded in my Han Gwich’in and Ogalala Lakota values and connected to the land, animals, waters and my culture. Protecting our way of life and land for future generations keeps me going and motivated.”
Quentin Bell
Quentin Bell, a trans man, is the executive director of The Knights & Orchids Society Inc., a Selma, Alabama-based nonprofit led by Black, Queer, and gender non-conforming activists who are working to protect LGBTQ rights in the South.
“Many of us forget that this work is long term. It isn’t an overnight fix, and we have to prepare the next line of fighters for the work. I had to become my own advocate because there wasn’t anyone who looked like me that I could relate to through my transition. Once I created what I needed, I reached back to help others like me. In that reach back, I realized that I had to move out of the way.”
Ridhima Pandey
At the age of nine Pandey sued the Indian government over climate change. Her home state of Uttarakhand has been devastated by heavy rains, flash floods and deadly landslides. She wants to force her government to prevent any more damage. She says, “I want to save our future, the future of the coming generations.”
Vanessa Nakate
Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate justice activist. She grew up in Kampala and started her activism in December 2018 after becoming concerned about the unusually high temperatures in her country.
Vic Barrett
Vic Barrett is a first-generation Garifuna-American, based in New York. He was one of the 21 young plaintiffs in the Juliana v United States lawsuit. “People of colour, Indigenous communities, low-income communities and young people face a significantly higher risk of experiencing the impacts of climate change”, he says.