A Note from SPR Co-President Emily Villa:

The SPR is officially partnering with ChallengeUS, a non-profit organization working to increase youth civic engagement through running global competitions for students to tackle real-world issues and earn scholarship prizes. As Stanford’s only multi-partisan political review, we are committed to underscoring civic engagement across campus and beyond. This makes ChallengeUS’s mission pertinent to our own. ChallengeUS’s Winter 2025 competition, held in partnership with Climate Cardinals, drew nearly 400 submissions from young people worldwide on how they plan to confront climate change. A full report compiled by ChallengeUS in March of 2026 will be available on our website, with more insight into the winners of the competition.

“Climate change was a homework that, despite its loud insistence, was never to be done,” observed Jihyun Ko, a high school student from Michigan. Her words capture a growing frustration among young people with what many describe as “climate theater”: a pattern in which the urgency of climate change is consistently acknowledged in education, politics, and social discourse without accompanying action. Or, if actions are taken, they are limited and do not account for important considerations such as climate justice and equity. In response, young people are not only paying attention; they are pushing back. They are vocal, motivated, and as this report will make clear, determined to be heard.

The ChallengeUS x Climate Cardinals Future Leaders Competition created a platform to elevate these student voices, bringing together nearly 400 students from over 50 countries and six continents. Each was asked to “share a key moment, lesson, observation, or analysis that shaped how [they] approach climate action.” Collectively, the creative essays, analytical papers, speeches, and artworks offer a rare, firsthand account of how Gen Z understands and approaches the climate crisis. They reveal what fuels their frustration, where their trust falters, what they fear, and—just as importantly—what sustains their hope. They also illuminate the solutions young people are already testing and the approaches they believe can meaningfully support communities on the frontlines of climate change.

“I slowly learned: if an action cannot lead to change, it is insufficient.”

—Jihyun Ko, USA, excerpt from “The Elder Elk of Yeosu”

These young changemakers are not asking adults to pay attention. They are interrogating why attention so often fails to translate into action. They are criticizing campaigns run in their name, while simultaneously building solutions where policy has fallen short: community-based composting networks, grassroots education initiatives, recycling clubs, reforestation programs, and more. For them, climate change is not solely an environmental issue. It is a question of justice, morality, and narrative.

What follows is a snapshot portrait of this argument, drawn directly from youth voices and organized by region.

South Asia: The Normalized Flood

The most common opening anecdote in submissions from South Asia depicts the same shared experience: a rising, chaotic flood of water encroaching into places it should not be.

Fahim Hossain, a college student from Bangladesh, grew up watching water transform from a friend to a threat. For Fahim, water had always been a defining part of his community’s identity. However, one year, the floods did not recede. Instead, they took on a more sinister nature as it soaked furniture, destroyed homes, and shifted people’s understanding of their environment. “No one announced that this was climate change,” Fahim writes. “There was no dramatic declaration. Instead, there were hushed conversations, worried glances, and a silent acceptance that this was becoming normal.”

The word “normal” appears more often in submissions from South Asia than in submissions from any other region. And its use is deeply unsettling. These young leaders are not using normal to allude to resilience; rather, they are identifying the normalization of climate disruption as one of the greatest barriers to meaningful action against climate change.

“Adaptation born from necessity should never replace accountability from those most responsible for the crisis.”

—Fahim Hossain, Bangladesh, excerpt from “The First Climate Lesson I Learned Did Not Come From a Textbook, a Seminar, or a Global Summit”

Bhakti Sharma, a high school student from India, captures that same troubling sense of normalization through absence rather than catastrophe. In her submission to the contest, she tells the story of when she noticed her six-year-old sister drawing a picture but leaving the sky uncolored. When asked why, her sister explains that she does not have a grey crayon. Sharma reflects: “Since when did the sky become grey?”

Her question perfectly sums up a common concern of South Asian youth regarding climate change. Through personal narratives, these students describe childhoods shaped by routine air quality alerts, summers planned around extreme heat, and floods treated less as disasters and more as logistical inconveniences. They are the first generation to experience climate change not as a policy lever but as a condition of everyday life. And what alarms them most is not just that climate change is happening, but how quickly it has ceased to alarm others.

“Environment becomes secondary, not because people lack empathy, but because they grow up in a system which normalises environmental damage at the cost of success.”

—Bhakti Sharma, India, excerpt from “The Sky She Didn’t Draw”

Sub-Saharan Africa: Climate Equity

Submissions from Sub-Saharan Africa center on one of the most urgent questions in global climate discourse: equity. These youth, through personal accounts of droughts and floods, confront a fundamental imbalance: those least responsible for climate change are often those most affected by it.

Ndeye Bigué Faye, a college student from Senegal, underscores this disparity, noting that the climate crisis “is hitting vulnerable populations hardest” who have largely “contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions.” Faye’s perspective reflects a broader concern among youth in the region: that climate solutions too often overlook the social justice variables often at play.

For many, this inequity is not abstract. Yvonne Mhlanga, an undergraduate student from Zimbabwe, has watched her community’s tobacco farming economy unravel under erratic rainfall and intensifying drought. “What broke my heart,” she writes, “was watching hardworking farmers put in the same effort as before, yet receive nothing in return.”

However, these narratives are not solely defined by loss. They are equally marked by innovation and initiative. Despite a lack of resources, many students have developed ways to tackle climate change in their communities. Allan Okello, a college student from Uganda, developed a program called the “Green Roots Initiative,” distributing 7,500 storybooks on environmental stewardship to thousands of young children in Western Uganda and planting more than 2,000 trees. His work aims to embed climate education within existing curricula to develop long-term behavioral change with the hope of combatting climate change. Similarly, Sinenkhosi Dlamini from Eswatini is advancing conservation education through school partnerships, while organizing cleanups and working with local farmers.

Across this region, youth are not waiting for top-down solutions. They are equipping themselves, their communities, and even the next generation with the tools to act.

“When youth understand how restoring a river or protecting a wetland impacts both ecosystems and communities, they become agents of change, capable of multiplying small actions into large-scale solutions.”

—Sinenkhosi Dlamini, Eswatini, excerpt from “Conservation is My Climate Action”

The Pacific Rim: The Mechanics of Climate Action

Like their counterparts from South Asia, submissions from students in the Pacific Rim echo concerns about normalization. However, these students approach the issue through the lens of perception, media, narrative framing, and even social equity, much like their peers from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Kiều Gia Bảo, the competition’s Grand Prize Winner and a college student from Vietnam, reflects on how routine flooding was experienced unevenly within his community. He observed that wealthier families enjoyed the ability to have water pumped out of their homes and continue with their daily routines. Meanwhile, street vendors, migrant workers, and elderly residents had to wait for the water to slowly dissipate. The same flood, Kiều notes, is not experienced equally; for some, it is an inconvenience, for others, a crisis. As a result, Kiều is centrally concerned that those with the means to adapt to climate change begin to normalize and minimize the crisis in the way it’s discussed, while those without the means feel the brunt of its consequences.

Jerhan Duran, a high school student from the Philippines, extends Kiều’s focus on the way climate change is perceived and talked about, but through the analysis of media dynamics. He argues that dramatic climate activism often produces dramatic coverage, which in turn triggers political backlash—ultimately entrenching positions rather than advancing policy. Instead, he calls for climate-sensitive journalism that centers affected communities rather than spectacle. To Duran, “the problem isn’t that we lack solutions. It’s that we’ve built cathedrals of policy in a world where no one remembers why they should walk through the door.”

Across these submissions, students from countries on the Pacific Rim move beyond policy design to examine the mechanisms that shape whether action succeeds or fails. Their focus is not just on what solutions exist but on why they stall, highlighting the roles of narrative, perception, and social structure in determining outcomes.

“Climate change taught me that the most dangerous thing is not sudden catastrophe, but gradual acceptance.”

—Gia Bảo Kiều, Vietnam, excerpt from “Learning to Read the Weather Between People”

South America: Environmental Justice

In South America, submissions emphasize that climate change cannot be meaningfully addressed without confronting the historical and structural inequalities that shape its impact. Similar to students writing from Sub-Saharan Africa, these youth are strongly focused on climate justice and equity.

Beatriz Faria, a high school student from Brazil, speaks for her peers when she draws on environmental justice scholarship to argue that climate change not only creates new inequalities but also intensifies existing ones. Her proposed response shifts climate action from mitigation towards justice and reparation. She argues that “initiatives that focus exclusively on reducing emissions, without considering social justice, fail to protect the most vulnerable communities and perpetuate systems of oppression.”

Camila Zuñiga, a college student from Peru, explores that same idea through storytelling. Her creative writing submission centers on a fictional girl from the Wampis community in the Peruvian Amazon, whose community’s sacred forest is destroyed. Her narrative’s central lesson underscores that climate action must protect not only ecosystems but also the “stories and cultures, our ancestral wisdom, in living memory.”

Together, these submissions argue climate action cannot solely be focused on the physical world but must also take into account the social, historical, and structural implications at play.

“Addressing environmental racism is not only an environmental issue, but also a moral and legal imperative.”

—Beatriz Faria, Brazil, excerpt from “Environmental Racism and the Limits of Traditional Climate Action”

The West: The Persistent Youth

Across all regions, submissions from the West—the United States, Australia, Europe, and so on—take a more introspective turn, focusing on the psychological dimensions of the climate crisis. Rather than opening with visceral descriptions or personal anecdotes about physical disasters, they confront the paralysis and fear that a generation burdened by climate change faces.

Sophie Tipper, a high school student from the United States, reflects on a common refrain from older generations: “We won’t be alive to see the effects of climate change.” For some, this sentiment serves as an abdication of responsibility. For Sophie and her peers, it translates into existential pressure and anxiousness over the prospect of living with the consequences of decisions they did not make. Fortunately, those fears don’t always lead to despair. Instead, Sophie channels them into action by leading recycling initiatives, helping pass environmental legislation, speaking on panels, and starting the Climate Policy Project. She serves as a prime example of the young people rising to the moment and not allowing themselves to be stifled by the scale of the issues they’re confronting.

Jess Stone, a college student from Australia, further illustrates Gen Z’s capacity to adapt rather than retreat. When she had recently immigrated to Australia, she witnessed firsthand the devastating 2011 floods. However, it was not until she heard a Saint Lucian delegate speak about the climate crisis at the World Economic Forum in Geneva that she describes having “unmuted the climate conversation” within herself. What followed was not a transition, but rather an innovative expansion. Rather than abandon her prior work in child sexual abuse prevention, she found the intersections between vulnerability, inequality, and climate risk and began bridging the two fields. When the Australian government later scaled back its climate commitments, she responded not with disillusionment, but with action in the form of co-founding the Oceania Caribbean Climate Alliance (OCCA). Her story reflects a broader mindset among Gen Z: they do not choose between crises; they connect them. As Jess puts it, they build “bridges between them.”

Across these accounts, youth from the West demonstrate a defining trait: persistence. Even in the face of uncertainty and doubt, they continue to act, innovate, and lead.

“I started because I was a scared 12-year-old girl who didn’t know what was going to happen to her planet and needed to do something other than stand by.”

—Sophie Tipper, USA, excerpt from “The TED Talk that Defeated a Goose”

What the Submissions Reveal

Taken all together, the hundreds of essays, analytical papers, speeches, and artwork pieces from the Climate Cardinals x ChallengeUS Future Leaders Competition offer a collective, global diagnosis from young people on whether and why climate action continues to fall short, as well as how it can be reimagined.

1. Normalization is the silent barrier to action

Across almost all regions, student participants identify normalization—not denial—as the most insidious obstacle to climate action. From India to Vietnam to Australia to the United States, youth are identifying the same pernicious pattern: as climate impacts become routine, urgency fades. Adaptation replaces accountability, and familiarity paves the path for inaction.

2. Climate justice must be at the forefront of climate discourse

Over half of submissions across all four of the competition’s categories—Creative Writing, Analytical Writing, Speech, and Art—center on climate inequity. Transcending borders, it is clear that young people believe climate action and climate justice are inseparable. For many of them, any solution that ignores this reality risks reinforcing the very systems it seeks to change.

3. Youth are already building localized solutions

Perhaps most striking is not what youth are asking for, but what they are already doing. From education initiatives to environmental programs, they are designing solutions tailored to their communities. They are starting school clubs. They are delivering books to children. They are mobilizing their peers. They are planting trees and cleaning rivers. They are no longer waiting for permission to act; they are fighting for their future. In doing so, they are not only responding to the climate crisis. They are redefining what leadership in this moment demands.

Art by: Maegan Quiazon