Newsletters
June Newsletter
This newsletter was first sent by email to the members of our Research Network. If you would like to be part of it, sign up here.
Hello and welcome to the June edition of our Youth Climate Justice Research Network newsletter!
This network is supported by the Youth Climate Justice project at University College Cork. The project is led by Prof. Aoife Daly and funded by the European Research Council (ERC). The network thrives thanks to your active participation and collaboration. This newsletter is prepared by Florencia Paz Landeira. For more about the project and our team, feel free to visit our website. You can also watch the recordings of all of our online research forums here!
If you have any events, publications, or opportunities you’d like featured in the July edition, please email youthclimatejustice@ucc.ie by July 14th with ‘Research Network Newsletter’ in the subject line.
Project News
Thank you for joining our May event! We wish to extend a huge thank you to everyone who participated in Child/Youth Participation, Climate Action, and Success in a Climate Case, co-hosted with the Sabin Center at Columbia University. The discussions and insights shared by academics, practitioners and young litigants were truly inspiring. If you missed it, you can find the recording here.
Interviews ongoing: Our team continues conducting interviews with lawyers, young litigants, judges and other stakeholders worldwide to explore how legal systems can better support youth climate justice. We want our work to inform future cases involving children/youth in the best way possible; by gathering evidence and rights-based approaches. If you haven’t yet participated — or know someone who should — please share these sign-up links: Lawyers, Young Litigants, Judges/Others.
Recordings now available! The recordings of the Children’s Rights Online Lecture Series – Session 2: Climate Justice & Children’s Litigation are now available. In this lecture, our postdoctoral researcher Dr Florencia Paz Landeira explored how children and young people are using climate litigation to claim intergenerational and temporal justice. The session is part of an ongoing online series co-hosted by the Centro de Estudios Constitucionales of Mexico’s Supreme Court and Leiden Law School, coordinated by Nicolás Espejo Yaksic and Ton Liefaard. You can watch it in English and in Spanish.
Youth Climate Applications/Litigation
Lighthiser v. Trump: On 29 May 2025, 22 young people filed this lawsuit in federal court, challenging three Executive Orders by President Trump that declare a “national energy emergency” and expand fossil fuels. They argue these Orders violate their constitutional rights to life and liberty by worsening climate harms and suppressing science. Supported by Our Children’s Trust, the plaintiffs seek to block the Orders to protect their health and futures. Read the press release and learn more here.
Climate facts!
In a previous newsletter, we introduced the concept of ‘keystone species’ which was coined over 50 years ago by Dr. Robert Paine after his tide pool research with starfish. While it is true that some plants and animals play a crucial role within their ecological networks, the conservation and policy efforts targeting specific ‘popular’ keystone species can divert focus away from other species that also play very important roles in the planet's ecosystems (Ogden, 2024).
- In the past 5 decades, the world has seen a 73% decline in over 5,000 vertebrates (Living Planet Report, 2024)
- Species are going extinct at a rate 1000 times the natural rate (Roe, 2019)
- Only 6% of the combined weight of all mammals on Earth is wild (Weizmann Canada, 2023)
So, while it is important to understand relationships between keystones species and their surroundings, it is even more vital that we recognise the value of all species—from the smallest microbes to the largest sea creatures. Even those pesky mosquitoes that bzzz in your ears, they are important too!
Open Calls and Events
Draft General Comment No. 27 on Children’s Right to Access to Justice — Deadline Approaching: Don’t miss the chance to comment on the UN CRC Committee’s draft GC clarifying children’s right to access justice and effective remedies. Submissions close on 30 June (18:00 CET). Details here.
Call for Papers: Acknowledge Place and More-than-Human. Online Symposium | 24 October 2025. Early career researchers are invited to submit abstracts for this interdisciplinary symposium exploring how children’s and youths’ living spaces are shaped by human and more-than-human relations in the Anthropocene. Contributions may address place-based, decolonial, or more-than-human approaches to health, identity, and climate justice. Presentations are welcome in Chinese, English, or German, with live translation. Submit a 200-word abstract by 25 August 2025 here. Participation is free and fully online. Contact: Bonan Liu (bonan.liu@uni-muenster.de) or Yanfei Li (feierli77@gmail.com).
Publications
Article: Successful unsuccessful children’s rights climate cases? Lessons learned from the Sacchi and Agostinho cases or the power of a non-judicial body, by Agnes Lux.
Article: No Rights to a Healthful Environment: Children Warrant Class Standing to Inhibit Climate Change Related Harm, by Keira Kramer.
Article: Migration, Climate, and Education: Proposing Human Rights-Based Education for Internally Displaced Learners in Lower- and Middle-Income Countries, by Tien Pham.
Article: Place-based and intergenerational storytelling for youth climate action: moving beyond participation and towards momentum, by Florence Halstead, Katie J. Parsons, Thu Vo, Alison Lloyd Williams, Lisa Jones, Hue Le, Anh Nguyen, Christopher Hackney & Daniel Parsons.
Article: Information needs and methods of accessing climate information by urban children and youth in Bangladesh: a policy-practice agenda, by Md Khalid Hossain, Zerina Lokmic-Tomkins, Gillian Oliver, Joy Bhowmik, Simon Rahman, Misita Anwar, Viviane Frings-Hessami & Tanjila Kanij.
Book: Global Youth Protest, Climate and Education, by Jennifer Lauren.
Book chapter: Environmental Chronic Emergencies and Future Generations, by Laura Magi.
Book chapter: Climate migration and displacement. A children's rights perspective, by Alison Prowle and Janet Harvell.
Book chapter: The need for child-led climate litigation in Bangladesh: lessons from India and Pakistan, by Preetkiran Kaur, S. Sathiabama and S. Vedavalli.