The role of youth in climate advocacy in south-south Nigeria

Climate change is exacerbating Nigeria's socio-environmental issues, and the South-South part of the country is even more at risk due to flooding, coastal erosion, degradation of ecosystems, and the concentration of extractive industries. Therefore, young people represent an important segment of climate governance; their contributions have mostly been informal in nature. The paper explores the involvement of youth in climate advocacy in South-South Nigeria by investigating the relationships between climate awareness, youth activities, community participation, and institutional support. The researcher administered 360 questionnaires to youths who are between 20 and 35 years who reside in the South-South states of Nigeria. The data for the study were analysed using Spearman’s correlation, linear and multiple regression techniques in IBM SPSS (v26). The study's findings indicate that there is a strong, positive, and significant correlation between climate awareness and youth participation (ρ = 0.760, p < 0.01), climate awareness and advocacy effectiveness (ρ = 0.760, p < 0.01), and advocacy effectiveness and community engagement (ρ = 0.790, p < 0.01). Findings from the regression analyses demonstrate that youth-led climate advocacy indeed greatly influences climate awareness (β = 0.760, R2 = 0.578, F = 164.60, p < 0.001) and community engagement (β = 0.790, R2 = 0.624, F = 243.98, p < 0.001), while institutional support positively impacts youth participation (β = 0.51, p < 0.001). On the contrary, structural barriers to a very large extent negatively impact (β = -0.38, p > 0.001) youth participation in climate advocacy. The study indicates that amplifying the role of youth in climate governance and removing the limitations could lead to unleashing the full potential of youth-led climate advocacy in South-South Nigeria.