* This guest op-ed article was written by Natalia Tsuyama and Ana Heloísa Alves, from ICLEI South America Secretariat Youth Committee, as part of “Youth Voices,” ICLEI’s new guest op-ed and blog series, featuring insights from young changemakers.

The climate crisis is not generationally neutral. In cities across the Global South, youth face disproportionate impacts from environmental degradation, floods, heatwaves, and air pollution, often compounded by social and economic inequalities. Intergenerational climate justice is not just about protecting future generations; it’s about ensuring today’s youth have real power to shape climate action now.

In Brazil, an emerging generation of youth leaders is transforming this narrative through Youth Councils (Conselhos de Juventude). These institutional spaces are becoming strategic platforms for intergenerational climate justice, enabling young people to influence public policies and local climate action agendas.

Youth Councils were established in Brazil after the 2005 National Youth Policy Law to guarantee participation in public decision-making at national, state, and municipal levels, including the National Youth Council (CONJUVE). Today, over 300 municipalities have Youth Councils, according to the 2021 Youth Atlas (Atlas das Juventudes). These consultative bodies bring together young representatives to monitor and influence public policy. 

However, their role in climate governance is still underutilized and, in many cases, invisible. If local and regional governments are serious about climate justice, these councils must be empowered to act as co-creators of solutions, not just observers of the problem.

From symbolic participation to structural power

Youth participation is too often limited to public consultations or awareness campaigns. But the climate emergency demands new governance models where young people are embedded across all stages of decision-making. From planning to implementation to monitoring.

Brazilian Youth Councils have the potential to:

• Influence urban adaptation strategies;
• Advocate for green and just transitions;
• Promote local climate policies that reflect youth priorities;
• Ensure accountability through ongoing civic engagement;
• Increase the participation of Indigenous youth, youth from peripheral areas, and traditional communities in decision-making spaces.
  

Yet challenges remain: Lack of institutional recognition, limited resources, and bureaucratic barriers often restrict their impact.

The Youth Atlas notes that while young people use social media to amplify their demands, barriers still prevent this from reaching public authorities and driving change. Youth councils, organizations, and collectives can improve access to decision-making, but their influence often depends on size, skills, and capacity to navigate bureaucracy, young people from government representatives and from policy-making processes.

Similarly, the 2022 Engajamundo study Where Are the Youth in Federal Public Policy? found stagnation in the institutionalization of youth-oriented initiatives: Progress between 2013 and 2019 stalled in 2018, with active regulations declining after 2019. This may reflect a lack of interest in creating new rights for youth or regulating existing ones. Furthermore, the absence of proper monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of youth policies hinders their improvement and updating by the federal government. 

In Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest cities, the Municipal Youth Council (COMJUVE BH) –the first municipal youth council ever in Brazil, legally created in 1998, but formally established in 2006 during the first Municipal Youth Conference of Belo Horizonte– is beginning to break the cycle of symbolic participation. Through direct engagement with city departments, COMJUVE BH successfully advocated for the inclusion of the Municipal Secretariat of Environment as a permanent member of the Council, ensuring environmental issues remain central to youth policy discussions

In collaboration with the city government, COMJUVE BH has also launched the Municipal Youth Conference, the official mechanism for collecting youth input on public policy priorities at the local level. Held in July 2025, the conference’s seventh edition focused on Climate Adaptation and the Role of Youth. The main goal was the revision of municipal youth legislation and policies, including the Youth Lethality Prevention Plan, with particular attention to environmental and climate-related risks that disproportionately affect marginalized communities.

COMJUVE BH is also working alongside youth movements to draft recommendations for local youth climate action plans.

What needs to happen next

To fully unlock the potential of Youth Councils as drivers of climate justice, local and regional governments must move from symbolic gestures to structural reforms. This requires:

• Institutionalizing youth participation in Environmental Councils as voting members, ensuring that young people have decision-making power in climate and environmental policies.
• Formalizing the participation of Environmental Secretariats in Youth Councils, creating permanent interdepartmental bridges that connect youth policy to climate governance agendas.
• Providing legal guarantees, resources, and financial autonomy so that Youth Councils can operate with continuity, independence, and real influence over policy processes.
• Promoting co-implementation models, where youth are not only consulted but actively engaged in delivering climate solutions – through education programs, community initiatives, and local adaptation strategies.
• Recognizing youth as accountability actors, by supporting mechanisms for civic monitoring, policy tracking, and independent evaluation of local climate commitments.
• Understanding the various cultural, structural, and subjective factors that influence youth development from an intersectional perspective, and creating mechanisms to facilitate their access to decision-making spaces and youth councils.
• Regularly map the needs and expectations of young people as a means to improve youth-oriented public policies.

Rethinking local governance

Indigenous, Black, and historically marginalized youth -those most affected by the climate crisis- are still not present in decision-making spaces, facing barriers such as lack of education and empowerment, lack of targeted public policies, underrepresentation, and difficulty with technicality of political processes.

As climate impacts intensify, local governments cannot afford to leave young people on the sidelines. Youth Councils are vital infrastructures for intergenerational co-governance. Strengthening these spaces is not a favor to youth; it is a necessity for building resilient, equitable, and climate-ready cities.

As COP30 approaches, strengthening the synergy between local governments and Youth Councils presents a unique opportunity to bring youth voices into global climate discussions. Only then can we move forward together toward a fair, representative future, with leaders who are committed and responsive to the socio-environmental crisis we face.

*About the authors

Natalia Tsuyama is a public policy specialist and climate justice advocate from Brazil. She works with youth organizations across Latin America to promote sustainable and inclusive governance.

Ana Heloísa Alves is an amazonian young woman, law student, gender and climate researcher and youth representative and social impact leader engaged in promoting youth participation in climate policies in Brazilian cities.