Children and Youth Environmental Action: The Case of Children and Youth with Disabilities

Chiara Salvatore and Gregor Wolbring
Additional contact information
Chiara Salvatore: Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N4N1, Canada

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 17, 1-27

Abstract: Youth environmental activism is on the rise. Children and youth with disabilities are disproportionally impacted by environmental problems and environmental activism. They also face barriers towards participating in activism, many of which might also apply to their participation in environmental activism. Using a scoping review approach, we investigated the engagement with children and youth with disabilities by (a) academic literature covering youth environmental activism and their groups and (b) youth environmental activism group (Fridays For Future) tweets. We downloaded 5536 abstracts from the 70 databases of EBSCO-HOST and Scopus and 340 Fridays For Future tweets and analyzed the data using directed qualitative content analysis. Of the 5536 abstracts, none covered children and youth with disabilities as environmental activists, the impact of environmental activism or environmental problems such as climate change on children and youth with disabilities. Fourteen indicated that environmental factors ‘caused’ the ‘impairments’ in children and youth with disabilities. One suggested that nature could be beneficial to children and youth with disabilities. The tweets did not mention children and youth with disabilities. Our findings suggest the need for more engagement with children and youth with disabilities in relation to youth environmental activism and environmental challenges.

Keywords: environmental activism; disabled youth; youth with disabilities; disabled children; children with disabilities; youth movements; youth activism; environmental movements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9950/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9950/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:17:p:9950-:d:629239

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().