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Abstract

This thesis explores how youth climate actors engage with the concept of Climate Justice (CJ) in a place-specific context. The research is guided by the questions: How do youth climate actors understand CJ? And how is this understanding of CJ informed by place to impact strategies for climate action? Employing youth-led participatory action research (YPAR), data collection took place through a research workshop and one-on-one interviews with youth members of the University of California Santa Cruz Climate Coalition on unceded territories of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. This thesis makes methodological, theoretical and substantive contributions to the scholarly and community-based conversations around the intersections of CJ and place. The results of this paper-based thesis are organized in two chapters that constitute stand-alone papers and address the main research objectives. Chapter 2 of this thesis shares methodological considerations as well as personal embodied experiences of the research process, seeking to make applying YPAR methodologies more accessible to fellow youth and young researchers. Chapter 3 then explores how CJ is employed in place-specific ways to understand its efficacy in localized contexts. Chapters 2 and 3 both cover aspects of practically engaging youth climate activists in exploring tools to investigate local CJ issues and communicate resulting demands to decision-makers to drive change in their communities. With this thesis, I bring youth-led methodologies, CJ-oriented action and place-based explorations into conversation with each other to encourage further reflection on strengths, challenges and responsibilities found at the intersections of doing place-specific CJ action as youth.