Climate governance and participation
We advocate for young women to have meaningful roles in designing, negotiating, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating climate policy.
A global coalition for young women leading climate justice
Young women are already leading climate justice.It is time our systems caught up.
Across communities, movements, research, policy, finance, innovation, and advocacy, young women are shaping climate solutions every day.
The Coalition of Young Women for Climate Justice connects those leaders, strengthens collective influence, and creates pathways for young women to shape the decisions that determine our shared future.
Launching ahead of COP31 as a long-term global platform for collaboration, advocacy, and collective action.
A coalition built to connect leadership, not replace it.
The Coalition of Young Women for Climate Justice is a global convening platform that brings together young women, grassroots movements, networks, institutions, and allies working toward a shared climate justice agenda.
The coalition does not replace the leadership, identity, or work of its members. It creates space for that work to connect, grow, influence decisions, and become harder to ignore.
Young women do not need permission to lead. They need climate systems that recognize their leadership, resource their ideas, and create meaningful pathways into decision-making.
That is why this coalition exists.
Learn About the CoalitionWhy we exist
Leadership is everywhere. Power and resources are not.
Young women are responding to drought, displacement, food insecurity, energy poverty, biodiversity loss, pollution, climate-related violence, and widening inequality.
They are organizing communities, defending ecosystems, building enterprises, producing research, shaping public debate, and advancing solutions rooted in lived experience. Yet climate leadership remains deeply unequal.
Representation
Young women are frequently invited into climate spaces after priorities have already been set. Participation without influence does not amount to meaningful representation. We want young women involved at the beginning of policy development, funding decisions, research agendas, and negotiations, not only during consultation or public presentation.
Climate finance
Many young women-led movements and community initiatives struggle to access flexible, long-term, and direct climate finance. Funding systems often favour large institutions, complex applications, and short project cycles. We advocate for climate finance that is accessible, accountable, locally informed, and responsive to the realities of young women.
Recognition
Young women's climate leadership is often fragmented across sectors. Work on health, care, food, water, safety, disability, migration, energy, technology, and gender justice may not always be recognized as climate work. The coalition connects these struggles and makes their climate significance visible.
Influence
Many young women have experience, knowledge, and community trust but lack direct routes into policy and negotiation spaces. The coalition creates stronger connections between grassroots leadership and the institutions shaping climate decisions.
Climate justice requires more than including young women in existing systems. It requires changing who holds influence, whose knowledge counts, and where resources go.
What we do
What we do together
The coalition creates shared spaces, tools, relationships, and opportunities that enable young women and allies to act with greater collective influence.
01
Convene
We bring young women, movements, institutions, policymakers, researchers, funders, and allies into meaningful conversations about climate justice. Our convenings are designed for exchange, strategy, accountability, and action.
02
Connect
We connect young women across countries, regions, movements, and sectors. These connections support collaboration, peer learning, solidarity, joint advocacy, research partnerships, and stronger pathways into decision-making spaces.
03
Coordinate
We support collective positions, shared campaigns, policy engagement, and coordinated participation in climate processes, so diverse members can retain their identities while acting together.
04
Amplify
We elevate the knowledge, analysis, solutions, and political demands of young women. This includes community experiences, research, creative expression, and stories often overlooked in mainstream climate conversations.
05
Influence
We create opportunities for young women to engage governments, climate institutions, funders, international bodies, and media, aiming for meaningful influence over climate policy, finance, and accountability.
06
Mobilize
We support campaigns, public actions, open letters, and dialogues that bring attention to urgent climate justice priorities.
Our shared agenda
Climate justice connects every part of life.
The climate crisis is shaped by power, inequality, history, and access to resources. Its impacts are felt through food, water, health, care, land, safety, migration, work, energy, technology, and political participation. Our shared agenda reflects these connections.
Climate finance
We call for climate finance that is accessible to young women-led movements and community initiatives, responsive to local priorities, and accountable to the people most affected by climate decisions.
Adaptation and resilience
We support recognition of locally led adaptation and the knowledge communities already use to live with changing climates.
Loss and damage
We advocate for responses to climate loss and damage that recognize unequal impacts, address non-economic loss, and reach affected communities.
Care and climate justice
Climate shocks increase unpaid care work and deepen pressure on women and girls. We work to ensure care is treated as a central climate policy and financing issue.
Health, bodily autonomy, and safety
Climate change affects health systems, sexual and reproductive health, mental health, protection, and exposure to gender-based violence. Climate responses must address these realities.
Food, water, and land
Young women are central to food systems, water access, land stewardship, and biodiversity protection. Their rights, knowledge, and leadership must shape climate solutions.
Energy justice
The transition to clean energy must be affordable, inclusive, community-informed, and free from new forms of exploitation.
Disability inclusion
Climate policy, emergency planning, finance, events, communication, and infrastructure must include persons with disabilities from the beginning.
Indigenous and local knowledge
Indigenous peoples and local communities hold vital knowledge about ecosystems, land, water, adaptation, and resilience. Their rights, sovereignty, and leadership must be respected.
Technology and climate justice
Climate technologies, data systems, artificial intelligence, and digital tools must be developed and governed in ways that protect rights, reduce inequality, and respond to community priorities.
Just transition
The shift toward low-carbon economies must create dignity, opportunity, safety, and fairness for workers and communities.
Many places. Many movements. One shared future.
Climate justice looks different across communities, but the struggles are connected.
For one young woman, climate justice may mean securing water during a prolonged drought. For another, it may mean defending ancestral land, demanding cleaner air, building a renewable energy enterprise, researching climate-health impacts, organizing workers, challenging extractive finance, or negotiating stronger national climate commitments.
The coalition creates a global space where these experiences can inform one another. As the coalition grows, this space will feature members, movements, perspectives, events, and campaigns from across regions.
Growing global communityEmerging regional connectionsYoung women across movements and sectorsOpen to participation from every region
Regions
- Africa
- Asia
- the Pacific
- Latin America and the Caribbean
- the Middle East and North Africa
- Europe
- North America
Campaign spotlight
The road to COP31 begins with the voices already leading.
COP31 is an important moment for climate diplomacy, but climate justice cannot begin and end inside a conference venue.
Ahead of COP31, the coalition will convene young women across regions to identify shared priorities, strengthen policy engagement, connect grassroots realities with formal negotiations, and advance collective demands.
The Road to COP31 will include listening sessions, public dialogues, policy development, storytelling, learning spaces, partner engagement, and coordinated advocacy. This work will help shape the coalition’s long-term agenda beyond COP31.
Campaign priorities
- Young women's leadership in climate governance
- Direct and equitable climate finance
- Gender-responsive adaptation
- Care, health, safety, and climate justice
- Loss and damage
- Inclusive energy transitions
- Rights-based climate policy
- Accessible participation in climate processes
Voices from the coalition
Climate justice, in our own words
The coalition is shaped by the experiences, knowledge, and political imagination of young women across different places and movements. This space will carry reflections, interviews, opinion pieces, field notes, creative work, research, and calls to action from coalition members and contributors.
PerspectivesCommunity storiesPolicy analysisResearchCreative expressionMember reflections
Climate justice means being able to shape the decisions that affect our lives, our communities, and the generations coming after us.
Partners and allies
Collaboration strengthens movements.
Climate justice requires cooperation across communities, movements, institutions, generations, and sectors.
The coalition works with partners and allies who respect young women’s leadership, support shared climate justice priorities, and are willing to contribute resources, knowledge, access, platforms, or institutional influence.
Partnership must be grounded in mutual respect, transparency, accessibility, and accountability.
Partner categories
Grassroots movementsYouth and feminist networksIndigenous organizationsOrganizations of persons with disabilitiesResearch and academic institutionsClimate finance actorsCivil societyGovernments and public institutionsInternational institutionsResponsible private-sector partnersMedia and cultural platforms
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Partner logos will appear here once partnerships are confirmed.
Bring your leadership. Bring your questions. Bring your movement.
The Coalition of Young Women for Climate Justice is open to young women leading, researching, organizing, creating, advocating, and building across the climate justice movement.
Allies, institutions, networks, and partners committed to supporting young women’s leadership are also invited to participate.
Joining the coalition means entering a shared space for connection, learning, advocacy, collaboration, and collective action. It does not require you to give up your existing identity, organization, movement, or priorities.
Newsletter
Stay connected to the movement.
Receive coalition news, upcoming events, campaign updates, opportunities, resources, and perspectives from young women advancing climate justice around the world.