Perceptions of wellbeing in climate-just futures among youth climate activists

This paper merges the two fields of degrowth and climate education through reconsidering narratives of wellbeing and what constitutes these ideas of wellbeing in the capitalist present and in envisioned climate-just futures. Wellbeing is a key aspect of ‘degrowth’, an academic field and emerging social movement that advocates reduced production and consumption while shifting ideas of ‘progress’ from economic growth towards wellbeing for all within ecological limits. Yet, climate education discourse skirts around challenging limits to economic growth and falls in line with ‘green growth’ narratives, despite the clear necessity of decreasing overconsumption in the Global North to meet the required climate targets. Formal and non-formal education are key sites for shifting cultural common senses and practices towards those that are both compatible with ecological limits and ensure that basic needs are met for all people. This study uses participatory visual research methods, namely ‘cellphilm’, to explore youth climate activists’ perceptions of wellbeing in the context of the climate emergency and in visions of climate-just futures. Participants identified justice, interconnectedness, collaboration and cooperation, and longtermism as aspects of a holistic understanding of wellbeing needed to imagine and prefigure climate-just futures. Participants identified several themes in their cellphilms that align with ideas in the degrowth discourse. While this study did not have the scope to go beyond this exploration of wellbeing to link to degrowth explicitly, it does begin laying foundations for merging climate change education and education for degrowth.