Awareness and Insights of Sangguniang Kabataan Chairpersons in Laoag City for Enhancing Sustainable Agriculture, Ensuring Food Security, and Promoting Climate Action

Sustainable agriculture, food security, and climate action remain pressing developmental priorities in the Philippines, and local youth leaders occupy an increasingly prominent role in advancing these agendas at the barangay level. This study examines the awareness, insights, and futures-oriented perspectives of Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) Chairpersons in Laoag City in relation to sustainable agriculture, food security, and climate action. Anchored in Anticipatory Governance and Systems Theory, and operationalized through the Futures Triangle framework, the research explores how youth leaders navigate the interaction of future aspirations, present conditions, and historical constraints in shaping local sustainability initiatives. A descriptive quantitative research design was employed, involving seventy-eight (78) SK Chairpersons drawn from the full population of incumbent chairpersons across the city’s barangays. Data were gathered through a structured, validated questionnaire measuring awareness, personal engagement, and perceived barriers and enablers across three thematic domains, and analyzed using descriptive statistics and Likert-scale interpretation. Findings revealed a very high overall level of awareness (M = 4.61) and personal engagement (M = 4.68) among respondents, with climate action registering the highest composite scores. However, notable gaps emerged in the implementation of climate change education workshops and food security initiatives, both of which lagged considerably behind environmentally oriented activities such as tree planting and community gardening. Applying the Futures Triangle further revealed persistent tension between youth leaders’ aspirations for resilient, self-sufficient communities and structural weights such as limited resources, traditional practices, and recurring climate disruptions. The study underscores youth leadership as a critical driver of sustainability transitions and highlights the urgent need for capacity-building, knowledge-based programming, and stronger institutional support to translate high awareness into sustained, systemic action.