“The Earth Is Dying, Bro”

Climate Change and Children Australian children are uniquely situated in a vast landscape that varies drastically across locations. Spanning multiple climatic zones—from cool temperate Tasmania to the tropical North—Australia is home to flora and fauna specific to diverse regions, including arid desert and rainforests, mountainous woodlands, and unique mangrove estuaries and coastal regions. Many of Australia’s endemic species—about 85%—are found nowhere else in the world, and in 2020 alone, 763 new species of flora and fauna were catalogued in Australia (Creswell et al). As a country, Australia is experiencing the full gamut of climate-related devastation, including rising land and sea temperatures, coral bleaching and loss of marine life, extreme bushfires and prolonged periods of drought, flooding, and relocation of communities. These extreme climate related events threaten human livelihoods and wellbeing in diverse ways, and disproportionately affect children. It is well documented that children around the world are experiencing anxiety, grief, anger, and despair about the damage climate change is causing to the planet, and the lack of action being taken to reverse this damage (Arnot et al.; Antronico et al.; Galway et al.; Hickman et al.; Ojala et al.). Today’s children will inherit a myriad of critical environmental, health, and socio-economic issues that will shape their future. Awareness of these impending challenges can invoke extreme distress from a very young age (Lee et al.; Halstead). Despite their feelings of powerlessness (Hickman et al.; Galway) and the disproportionate impact on their generation, children and young people are effective agents of change (Treichel; Haltstead; Trott). Climate change research is demonstrating that “children are effective communicators”, they “possess unique perceptions of risks” and “have distinctive knowledge and experiences and are capable of identifying and implementing viable, locally appropriate adaptation responses” (Treichel 27). The specific climate-related effects that children face vary based on their geographic location and socioeconomic difference. While global narratives and imagery about climate change and its impacts often utilise widely recognised phenomena such as melting sea-ice, deforestation, coral bleaching, and the great pacific garbage patch, the specific challenges faced by Australian children in their local suburbs look quite different. To explore the specific climate-related experiences and concerns of some Australian youth, creative and participatory workshops were conducted with children and young people in three geographically diverse regions of New South Wales (NSW). During the month of July 2023, 49 children and young people aged between 10 and 18 years participated in climate change workshops run by the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University. The workshops formed part of the research project in partnership with UNICEF Australia, who also co-facilitated some workshops. Participants were recruited from three regions of NSW, including Western Sydney (WS; 34 participants), the Upper Hunter (UH; 2 participants), and the Northern Rivers (NR; 13 participants). The purpose of the workshops was to explore children’s perceptions and experiences of climate change, as well as their aspirations for the future, which were then used to develop a child-centred indicator framework for climate change (Third et al.) During our workshops we discovered that children communicate specific climate-related challenges and fears based on the unique landscape in which they live, and these location-based issues are the subject of this article Children from Three Climate-Affected Areas Most workshop participants (86%) shared feelings of sadness, anger, and worry about climate change. These feelings reflect a state of solastalgia: a sense of loss and pain for the land that they love and call home (Albrecht). Participants expressed feeling a disproportionate “sense of responsibility/burden … to create change and solve [a] climate crisis that they did not start” (F, 15, WS). This responsibility “puts pressure on us to fix the mistakes of the older generation”, asserted one participant (F, 15, WS). And the burden of advocating for climate action, with its ongoing and cumulative impact on mental health, was recognised by another participant as increasing levels of “depression [and] anxiety about the future” (F, 18, WS). Throughout the workshops, one of the greatest fears expressed by participants was the prospect of climate change disrupting access to the natural world. Recognising the many benefits of spending time outdoors, participants expressed concern that climate change induced temperatures and events will trap them indoors, impacting on their wellbeing. They fear a future where “weather conditions will be unfit to go outside” (M, 15, WS), where “air pollution” and “overheating” (F, 15, WS) lead to adverse health effects and more time indoors. They also fear losing “access to education in times of bushfires, droughts, floods” (F, 17, WS), resulting in prolonged periods of remote learning (learning from home). As one child said, “we will be stuck inside or living underground” (M, 15, WS). In addition to losing access to natural spaces, children also fear destruction of the landscape. They fear a future where “waterways and landscapes are covered in rubbish and sewerage” (small group, 13-15, NR), where animals lose their natural “habitats due to deforestation” and become extinct (F, 15, NR). The Australian children and young people who contributed to this research demonstrate an acute awareness that connections with the land mediate connections within and between ourselves. They recognise the critical role that land plays in our construction of identity and community. For tens of thousands of years, Australian lands have been tended in interdependent relationship with Indigenous Australian communities (Malaspinas et al.)—cultures that represent a capacity for deep listening to the rhythms and needs of the land in all its diversity. Our participants fear a separation from land and urge all Australian citizens to act as stewards of our country. One group of children was eager to promote “an equal society that contributes to taking care of the society and land equally” (small group, 12-15, WS), while another emphasised that future action should involve following “First Nation’s environmental practices” (small group, 12-16, WS). The specific location-based experiences, challenges, and fears that emerged in engagement with these young people are explored below. Western Sydney Located in the geographical centre of the Sydney basin, Western Sydney is a dynamic, culturally diverse urban region. It has a rapidly growing population (About GWS) and is currently experiencing significant temperature rises related to its geographical location and urban heat island effects (Bubathi et al). Despite commencing only 30 kilometres from central Sydney, the Greater Western Sydney area experiences summer temperatures that can top Sydney’s maxima by 10°C (Bubathi et al). In early 2020, the city of Penrith in Greater Western Sydney was the hottest place on earth, hitting 48.9°C (Sydney’s Penrith). If carbon emissions are not significantly curbed, recent predictions suggest that, by 2090, Western Sydney could face up to 46 days each year of temperatures over 35°C (Melville-Rea and Verschuer). The economic impacts of rising temperatures—not to mention environmental and wellbeing impacts—will pervade society, from the individual ability to access necessary healthcare, utilities, food, and other necessities, to a whole nation’s capacity to provide for itself and engage meaningfully in the global economy (see Wood et al.; Steffen et al.; Australian Government). The Western Sydney region workshops took place in the suburb of Liverpool, a rapidly growing residential and multicultural area, with a population predicted to double by 2041 (Liverpool City Council). The ever-increasing demand for housing, coupled with rising interest rates and cost-of-living concerns, is putting considerable strain on families across the region, affecting household structures (Shaweesh). Western Sydney features a large culturally and linguistically diverse community, in which large family sizes and intergenerational living are common (Dockery et al.; Shaweesh). Many households in Western Sydney, including in the Liverpool region, are multigenerational or multi-family, reflecting a growing number of such households in the Western world (Lane and Gorman-Murray). Cultural values play an important role in shaping household makeup, but so do issues of housing affordability, rapid population growth, and migration—all of which contribute to housing density in the suburbs surrounding major Australian cities such as Sydney (Daley et al.; Shaweesh). While family structures and household compositions continue to change in response to social and cultural values and economic needs, physical dwellings and suburban structures tend to stay stagnant (Judd). This can lead to overcrowding (Dockery et al.). As Maram Shaweesh writes, “given that housing affordability is an obstacle to accessing adequate housing in Australia, larger nuclear families can end up living in housing that is too small for their needs (in terms of amenities), leading them to experience house crowding (Dockery et al.)” (140). Liverpool participants expressed significant concern about overcrowding in households and local communities. Although one child expressed concern that overpopulation in homes due to the cost-of-living crisis could affect “the upbringing of children” (F, 15, WS), most children were concerned about the impact of overcrowding on their access to essential resources. As one young person wrote, “overcrowding in cities is leading to hardships to access basic facilities such as schools, hospitals, etc.” (F, 18