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Do something: Children’s rights and Earth

Indigenous children from the Anishinaabe First Nation in Canada on a nature walk with elders, learning about medicinal plants that need protection.

Are you looking for ways to strengthen children's rights while fighting climate change and ecocide in your community? Check out our tips and pick the ones that suit you and your community best!

Look around you. Can you see anything you'd like to change. This boy, from a poor area in Romania, plays amongst litter and dirty syringes left by drug addicts. Do you have a playground near you that needs a clean-up?

Act locally

Everyone can try to live a little more sustainably. Recycle and don’t litter. Think especially carefully about not throwing chemicals and other harmful stuff in nature, where it can be bad for people, animals and other living things. Think about what you buy in shops – check the table of contents when buying goods, and, if you can, choose eco-friendly goods.

Former gang members and child soldiers plant trees at a rehab center in Medellín, Colombia.

Community clean-up

Lead or participate in local clean-up drives, tree-planting events, or recycling where you live. Encourage your school to organize an annual No Litter Day when students inform people about harmful littering, and how to care for the planet.

School children in Zimbabwe cleaning up their neighbourhoods on their own No Litter Day, at the same time sharing information about children's rights and caring for the earth.

Spread knowledge

Talk to your family and friends, and others around you to share the importance of caring for nature and combatting climate change. Let people know that all children have the right to a clean and healthy environment. Share information about how everyone can contribute to a healthier planet. For example, by recycling and using eco-friendly products, saving water when possible.

Girls in Zimbabwe make ther voices heard about climate change!

Talk about it

Start discussion sessions in your school or neighborhood about caring for our planet. Explore topics like the right to a clean environment and how climate change and destroyed environments can affect children’s rights negatively. Organize debates on topics such as 'Children's Right to a Healthy Environment' and 'Climate Action: What Can We Do?'.

These girls in India protest deforestation in their area by tying signs to trees, calling for the forest companies to stop cutting them down.

Give hope

Let people around you know that if climate change is halted and everyone takes responsibility for their local environment, this can also improve children’s lives. A healthier environment means fewer arguments over important things like land and water. Good crops won't be lost to bad weather, so families can thrive, and all children can eat well and stay healthy.

Don’t beat yourself up

Remember, it is the emissions from and waste of resources by wealthy countries and people over a long, long period that are the biggest causes of the climate crisis. They must now support low-income countries, where most people are already using resources efficiently. nothing will improve from you being sad. Talk to friends about hope and change, get out into nature, and pass on tips for small but positive changes to your everyday habits.