Anthropogenic climate change and environmental crises are the leading challenges of our time (IPCC, 2021). Such challenges have complex spatial and temporal impacts which drive social, education and health inequalities. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989) protects young people’s rights to express views on matters affecting them, but these tend to go unheard, and youth have few opportunities to be involved in environmental decision-making affecting them (Thew, Middlemiss and Paavola, 2020).  Although global youth movements have been at the forefront of climate and environment-focused advocacy, the knowledge and insights of young people are persistently marginalised in research and policy making which responds to climate and environmental crises (Dunlop & Rushton, 2022). Concomitantly, education researchers have recognised that knowledge-focused approaches to climate change and sustainability education are necessary but not sufficient (Cantell et al., 2019). Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles (2020) have underlined the need for participatory, interdisciplinary, creative and affect-driven approaches, which respond to the social, ethical and political complexities of the climate crisis.

Moving beyond the field of education, change is also needed in relation to environmental decision making. Conventional approaches to dialogue involving publics, policy makers, researchers and other change makers tend to focus on position taking and enabling ‘non-expert’ groups to inform decision makers’ proposals. Such approaches to public dialogue infrequently provide inclusive, varied, and authentic pathways for publics, especially under-represented groups such young people to inform decision making at multiple stages. This research aims to further develop and apply a co-generative approach to public dialogue and policy engagement, rooted in co-authorship which values diversity of experiences, ideas and approaches in response to environmental and climate crises.

To achieve this aim, we examine the role of youth co-authorship and capacity building in the context of environmental education and policy making through two recent projects: (1) The Manifesto project - the British Educational Research Association Manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability (Dunlop et al., 2022a) and, (2) The DICEY project - Dialogue in Climate Engineering with Youth, a UKRI/Royal Society of Arts experiment in public dialogue with youth on climate interventions (Rushton & Dunlop, 2022). The Manifesto project aimed to co-create with young people (16–18 years) and teachers, an illustrated manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability (EfES) for the four jurisdictions of the U.K. (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), where teachers and young people articulated a shared vision of what the future of EfES could look like and the Manifesto was launched in November 2021 (Dunlop et al., 2022a). The DICEY project foregrounded youth questions and ideas about climate interventions through a series of online workshops where young people (16-25 years) engaged in activities to generate questions for scientists, subject experts and policy makers and co-authored blogs. These questions were then put to a group of scientists and policy makers for discussion, with young people facilitating the discussion using illustrated question cards. DICEY builds on a previous project, Geo-engineering – a climate of uncertainty?, a project which brought youth from across Europe together to consider technological responses to climate change in policy making, resulting in the co-authorship of a Geo-engineering Youth Guide and Policy Brief (Dunlop et al. 2022b).

Our approach in both the Manifesto and DICEY projects was rooted in collectivity, participation and inclusivity, with a focus on creating spaces for voices less frequently heard in discussions and debates concerning education, the environmental and policy making, where participants were positioned as ‘knowing and approving experts’ (Edwards & Holland, 2013, p. 79). As such, these projects respond to calls for more democratic and participatory approaches to research and engagement with marginalised groups, including young people (Alminde & Warming, 2020). The workshops were constructed as a form of inquiry into participants’ perspectives and priorities, with attention to the consequences of continuing or changing actions and policies with regard to environmental action and education. Participatory methods can position participants as partners in research and have the potential to actively engage individuals and groups in a way that they themselves benefit from the experience beyond the life of the research project (Edwards & Brannelly, 2017). In both projects, we worked with an artist collaborator to create imagery that could be used to illustrate the Manifesto (Manifesto project) and the question cards created for the DICEY project. Visual art engages people in ways that academic writing cannot, allowing for new and deeper ways of seeing things, and Herbert (2021) proposes engagement with the socio-ecological imagination to envisage just and sustainable futures in the context of the climate crisis. Arts-based approaches have been used to promote the engagement and empowerment of youth (Lyon & Carabelli, 2016) and using arts to communicate research findings is a growing area of practice (Bartlett, 2015). Across both projects, there were a total of 15 workshops involving over 250 participants, which took place between April – May 2021 (Manifesto project) and January – February 2023 (DICEY project). Institutional ethical approvals were received on 9 March 2021 (Manifesto project) and 20 October 2022 (DICEY project). Contributions from over 250 participants were recorded, including workshop recordings (audio) and records of Zoom chat, Google Jamboard notes, MIRO boards and Mentimeter contributions (written), and analysed using qualitative content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005).

This research represents an opportunity to continue discussions around how to diversify environmental education and policy making such that the knowledge and insights of marginalised groups (such as youth) make a meaningful and sustained contribution. Through these two novel projects, young people are afforded opportunities to engage in environmental education and policy making through co-authorship in ways which build their capacity to both understand about the environment and to act for the environment. Participatory and arts-based approaches allow for reciprocity, intergenerational learning and co-production. As part of these two projects co-produced outputs included a manifesto, youth guide and policy brief and illustrated climate question cards. Such approaches to research and education can support youth engagement in spatially, temporally and ethically complex environment concerns which avoid polarisation and intractable position-taking. Co-authorship with youth research participants not only built a sense of responsibility and commitment, but developed young people’s capabilities and capacity to support their continued engagement and contribution. Tensions remain however in the extent to which co-production ensures that decision makers value youth questions and perspectives and the lack of financial payment to participate may exclude some groups of young people. Although world leaders and decision makers underline the place of education in responding to environmental and climate crises (UN Climate Change Conference, 2021) we argue that researchers must continue to co-produce and advocate with youth, approaches to environmental education and public dialogue which are genuinely transformative for all youth.

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