Youth movements are surging in several countries. What follows is an outline of an alternative path for these movements—one that could yield more durable results in securing a safer, better, happier, and more creative future for young people and children.
Let us begin with a fundamental question: For those under 30 today, what are the most important requirements for ensuring that the world they will inhabit for most of their lives in the coming decades will be a safe place—and that they will be able to find satisfying, creative, and happy lives within it? Once we are clear on this, we can discuss what needs to be done and what contribution youth and their movements can make.
For simplicity, let us proceed in a question-and-answer format.
What are the most important requirements for ensuring that youth and children can grow up in safe conditions in the coming decades?
Most scientists and experts agree that the basic life-nurturing conditions of the world are badly threatened by a dozen or so serious environmental problems—including climate change—by weapons of mass destruction, and by the indiscriminate use of disruptive technologies. These have created grave threats that must be removed, or at least significantly reduced, to ensure that today's youth and children can have a safe future.
All ongoing wars and civil wars must stop, and the possibility of future wars must be significantly reduced. The high risks created by imperialism and the pursuit of hegemony must be substantially decreased. Far-reaching governance reforms at the world level are needed to improve prospects for peace, disarmament, and the protection of life-nurturing conditions. Changes in value systems are also needed.
While these concerns have always been relevant, they are now a matter of existential importance—essential for saving life on Earth—because weapons have become too destructive and environmental problems like climate change have already become too serious. As long as wars continue, the international cooperation needed for the most essential reforms cannot be achieved. Hence, to provide basic safety for today's children and youth in the coming decades, the most essential reforms—based on peace and environmental protection—are needed.
In the safe world that must be created as the highest priority, how can we ensure that young people will be able to have satisfying, happy, and creative lives?
The first requirement is justice. On a large scale, resources must be moved away from wars, weapons, and the pursuit of excessive luxury by a few toward meeting the basic needs of all people—with priority given to the needs of children and teenagers.
A strong emphasis must be placed on making more resources available for education—for schools, colleges, and non-institutional education—but also for essential educational reforms. These reforms should give adequate emphasis to peace and nonviolence; protection of the environment and all forms of life; justice and equality; social responsibility; the spirit of cooperation and working together for the common good; the improvement of enduring and loving social relationships; and the improvement of health in a holistic way, encompassing physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.
A vital part of education is that students are encouraged and facilitated to form an understanding of their social and natural surroundings—and to think about how these can best be improved, as well as how they and their friends can themselves contribute to this. Their creativity and life satisfaction then become linked to how they can advance along these lines, and to how the wider society and economy can facilitate this more and more, or provide conducive conditions for it.
What contributions can youth and youth movements make to the most desirable and significant changes that are needed?
The contribution of youth is, of course, very important. Once such a framework of needed changes is accepted by youth and their groups, they must sooner or later become the main driving force of these changes toward a safe, satisfying, and highly creative world—increasingly filling leadership roles (while also accepting with due respect the guidance that several elderly people can provide) to take the world toward a future based on peace, justice, and environmental protection, with top priority given to resolving the existential crisis.
In this context, the role of youth movements—with their undoubted energy and creativity—can be the most important. With proper channelization of their creative energies, youth can become the leading force in resolving the existential crisis and creating a safe world based on peace, justice, and environmental protection.
Of course, many young people are already making important contributions to social movements for peace, justice, and environmental protection. These efforts should be taken forward by framing broader programs and demands in which these basic issues are brought together in mutually consistent ways, in keeping with the needs of various countries. This cannot be achieved through sudden upsurges from time to time. There must be continuity in the youth movement to pursue such issues on a durable basis, and the organizational base for this should be created. At the same time, more immediate issues troubling youth at any particular time should be understood and raised within this wider framework and understanding. It is important to raise immediate and short-term problems, but this should not come at the cost of ignoring or pushing aside the wider understanding needed to resolve the most basic problems over the longer term.
The commitment to basic issues and values should be so strong that even as young people move into middle age, they will continue to carry these commitments with them, contributing throughout their lives to creating a better and safer world.
While such youth movements are needed in all countries, they must also cooperate with each other and share experiences to learn from one another. At the same time, such a broad-based youth movement should keep away from powerful narrow interests—such as those linked to sectarianism or to foreign regime-change operations—whose only objective is to misuse youth for their narrow and harmful ends.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include "Planet in Peril," "Protecting Earth for Children," and "Man over Machine." His website is bharatdogra.in and his YouTube channel is Bharat Dogra | Save Earth Campaign
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