When Sara Llana and Stephanie Hanes first started thinking about how to tell the story of climate change to young people around the world, they noticed a paradox: Since the United Nations began protecting children's rights through the Convention on the Rights of a Child in 1989, young people have had more rights, but climate change has "really passed a tipping point," Hanes tells the Christian Science Monitor.
"So those same young people were facing a world with unprecedented challengeschallenges that were going to exacerbate everything from poverty to migration and all those human rights issues."
That's when they decided climate change was the story of their generation.
Over the course of a year, the pair visited with youths in eight countries to tell the story, the Virginian-Pilot reports.
"I started with a blank slate'children in the world' and asked Stephanie to help me figure out where we should focus," Llana says.
"Very quickly the two of us decided that climate change is the story of their generation."
Their project, published in the CSM last fall, examined the social and cultural transformations that young people across the globe are enacting in response to climate change.
"Instead of watching climate change happen to them, this generation was stepping up to create innovative solutions
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