Online training for children and young people to stand up for their environmental rights!

The United Nations Children’s Fund has reported that half the world’s 2.2 billion children are at “extremely high risk” from the impacts of climate change. Over half a billion children live in areas with extremely high levels of flooding, nearly 160 million children live in places with a high or extremely high chance of droughts, and more than 1.7 million children under the age of 5 die each year due to the effects of living in a polluted environment. Moreover, following a 2020 survey of child psychiatrists in England, more than half (57%) of them declared seeing children and young people distressed about the climate crisis and the state of the environment.

Every child - like we before them - has an inherent right to grow up in a safe environment, to lead a healthy physical and mental life and dream and develop in a prosperous future. Having colonised, in a great share, their future, we need to ensure that education not only addresses environmental issues and climate change, but also offers a framework for addressing, asserting, and "conquering" their (de facto) environmental rights to a safe and healthy environment!

Yesterday, and towards this end, the UN Environment Programme launched “Our Rights, Our Planet”, a free training for young people to learn about how to protect their environmental rights. The training is available online and offline, and features interviews with activists, scientists and experts from around the world, animated lessons, as well as an interactive game.