Pacific and Caribbean Youth Reclaim Climate Agency Through Decolonised Knowledge and Intergenerational Solidarity
Original framing: “Young People Are Bridging the Climate Divide for Oceania and the Caribbean” — bing news
The headline ignores the foundational role of Indigenous knowledge systems in Pacific and Caribbean climate resilience, such as *taonga* (treasured resources) stewardship in Aotearoa or *living shorelines* in Jamaica, which have been systematically undermined by extractive policies. Young activists today are reviving these practices, but their work is framed as 'innovative' rather than the continuation of ancestral resistance. The *UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples* (2007) explicitly recognises these systems as critical to climate solutions, yet they remain excluded from mainstream narratives.
The youth-led climate movements in Oceania and the Caribbean are not merely 'bridging divides' but are actively dismantling the colonial and neoliberal structures that have framed climate crises as technical problems rather than moral and spiritual obligations.
By reviving Indigenous knowledge systems—such as *kaitiakitanga* or *taonga* stewardship—these movements challenge the extractive paradigms embedded in global climate governance, where solutions are designed by Northern institutions for Southern consumption. The historical erasure of these practices, from the *Manila Declaration* to the dismissal of *liming* as a climate education tool, reveals a deliberate suppression of alternative epistemologies that could redefine resilience. The trickster role of these youth, using 'participation' to demand reparations and expose the hollow promises of climate diplomacy, mirrors the subversive strategies of figures like *Anansi* or *Hermes*, who turn the oppressor’s tools against them. To sustain these movements, systemic solutions must centre Indigenous self-determination, reparative justice, and cross-cultural solidarity—transforming climate action from a top-down adaptation exercise into a bottom-up revolution of knowledge and power.