The “where, who, why” of youth engagement in environmental decision-making: a scoping review

Abstract

Young people are recognised as critical stakeholders in environmental governance, yet their involvement in decision-making remains limited. As the climate and biodiversity crises intensify, ensuring meaningful youth participation is essential for fostering inclusive and future-oriented environmental governance. This scoping review examines the literature to understand the “where, who and why” of youth involvement in environmental decision-making. Our findings reveal an imbalance of literature emerging from Global North institutions, despite studies focusing on Global South contexts, highlighting the need for greater research led by scholars and institutions in the Global South to better reflect local priorities, contexts, and epistemologies in youth engagement. We uncover wide variation in the age ranges considered as youth coupled with a lack of justifications behind them, revealing conceptual and methodological vagueness. Our research reveals a dominance of rights-based rationales for engaging young people (e.g. intergenerational justice and impacts of climate change disproportionately affecting young people) compared to strategic ones (better policy outcomes, young people’s creativity and innovative thinking). There is an urgent need for those involved in youth research and practice to be transparent regarding who they are engaging with, why engagement is happening, and the consequences of this. Overall, we call for future youth research and engagement to challenge the limited and blurry conceptualisations of who counts as a young person, and to embark on youth work that is transparent, reflexive, intentional, and balanced with youth input at the forefront. Young people are often described as important contributors to environmental decisions but are rarely included in meaningful ways. As climate change and biodiversity loss worsen, involving youth in decisions that shape their futures is more important than ever. This review looked at research on youth participation in environmental decision‑making to understand three things: where this research is happening, who counts as “youth,” and why young people are being included. The review found several key issues. First, most studies about youth engagement come from authors based at institutions in the Global North, even when the research focuses on young people in the Global South. This raises concerns about who holds power in shaping ideas about youth and whose voices are missing. Second, this review demonstrates that no single definition of youth exists within environmental decision-making scholarship, and that age boundaries are applied variably depending on institutional and contextual factors. Third, the reasons given for involving young people are usually moral or rights‑based, for example, the idea that young people deserve a say because climate change affects them most. Whilst not an inherent weakness, few studies emphasise strategic reasons, such as how youth participation can lead to better decisions, more creative ideas, or stronger policies. Overall, the review highlights the need for more thoughtful, transparent, and youth‑centred approaches. Researchers and practitioners need to be clear about who they are involving, why they are involving youth, and what outcomes they hope to achieve. Future work should challenge narrow or unclear ideas about who counts as a “young person” and prioritise approaches that place youth perspectives at the centre.