International Youth Day 2026
In cities around the world, the climate crisis is no longer a distant threat, and the people least responsible for it are often the ones left to live with the consequences. Nearly every C40 city now reports facing severe climate hazards that threaten their economies and the safety of their residents.
Extreme heat alone takes more than 500,000 lives globally a year, while flood-related disasters have risen by 134% since 2000. Water scarcity now affects four billion people for at least one month every year, and without action, these risks will only continue to grow. Communities in the Global South are ten times more likely to be affected by climate impacts than the Global North, and are paying the highest price for a crisis they are least responsible for creating.
Yet young people aren’t idly waiting for the future. They’re designing flood-prepared parks, planting forests to cool their neighbourhoods, and providing farmers with the data they need to respond to an unpredictable climate.
On International Youth Day 2026, we explore what urban resilience looks like when it’s built by the people who are consistently at the forefront of driving decisive climate action.
What does Urban Climate Resilience actually look like?
São Paulo
In a city of 12 million, youth climate leader Beatriz Tonon is helping turn degraded riverbanks into places that protect the communities living alongside them.
One of them is the Pinheiros River, a 21km stretch running through the city that’s been restored both as green space and flood protection. Beatriz worked on the ecological restoration programme, a large-scale initiative combining environmental recovery, urban regeneration and public-space improvement across this important river corridor.
I believe projects like this are valuable because they demonstrate how environmental restoration can generate wider urban benefits. Revitalising river corridors can strengthen public health, increase climate resilience, expand access to quality public space, and improve the relationship between residents and their local environment.
Beatriz Tonon, C40 Youth Hub Member
Kuala Lumpur
Smallholder farming across Malaysia is slowly changing. Youth climate leaders Aqil Feisal and Gunjan Ghimire are empowering farmers with real-time data to improve yields, cut waste, and help local economies rely less on imports.
Together, these young people built CropCycle, a GPS-powered AI platform that analyses local climate conditions and provides farmers with tailored, actionable crop advice. By 2030, it aims to reach more than 10,000 farmers across Nepal and India, increase yields by 25% and cut post-harvest losses by 50%.
From Coventry to Vadodara
Near Chhani Lake, degraded land has been transformed into a 900-square-meter urban forest with 3,000 trees newly planted.
Jay Shah, a youth climate leader based in Coventry, UK, worked directly with Vadodara’s local leadership and city investors to turn a climate action plan into on-the-ground action.
Following this success, the Indian city already has plans to create more urban forests and oxygen parks. It intends to use this work as evidence to issue its own resilience bond. This will ensure future projects have the financial backing they need to succeed.
Cities like Vadodara are on the front line of climate impacts, heat stress, flooding, water stress, but they’re also where the most practical, on-the-ground solutions get built. I care about this work because it turns abstract climate targets into decisions a city can actually act on: where to plant trees, how to manage stormwater, climate risk and vulnerability assessment; which neighbourhoods need resilience investment first. Being able to help translate that from data and policy into something that protects real people’s lives is what keeps me motivated.
Jay Shah, C40 Youth Hub Member
Ulaanbaatar
In Ulaanbaatar, urbanisation isn’t happening evenly. The city centre has parks, modern infrastructure, and green neighbourhoods. The ger areas, where more than half the population lives, have very little of this.
Temuulen Enkhbat co-founded Ulaanbaatar Oasis to help close this gap. Working with the Global Shapers Ulaanbaatar Hub, Gonchigsumlaa Foundation and H.O.W Architecture, she has led the city’s first pocket park in a ger area, turning unused space around water kiosks in Bayanzurkh District into green community spaces, designed and maintained by local residents.
By investing in community-led solutions that prioritise social connection, wellbeing, and a sense of belonging, projects like this can help begin to close the nature gap and restore a sense of balance and fairness in the city.
As an urban planner, working closely with the communities on the ground for the past years has helped me understand that climate issues are a structural social justice issue. These frontline communities are the ones bearing the burden of heavy air pollution and a lack of accessible infrastructure that makes our city liveable and more resilient, but unfortunately, they are actively being excluded from the decision-making process that affects their daily life. I work to institutionalise participatory and community-led urban frameworks that help build more climate-resilient communities and healthy living environments, while preserving cultural continuity and resident agency in ger areas.
Temuulen Enkhbat, C40 Youth Hub Member
How cities are backing youth-led resilience
Through programmes like Resilient Urban Futures, Youth Climate Action Fund, and Youth Reinventing Cities, cities are recognising young people as partners, co-designers, and frontline responders in resilience efforts. That means bringing them into participatory processes such as community vulnerability mapping, green job creation, and youth councils.
Freetown
In Sierra Leone’s capital, youth are leading on climate action with the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Youth Climate Action Fund. The fund provides micro-grants directly to young people aged 15-24, who’ve used them to deliver 18 distinct climate and ecosystem projects across the city. Some have installed biodigesters that turn organic waste into cooking gas. Others have planted 25,000 mangrove seedlings and brought solar power to homes that never had it before. The fund is also helping youth leadership take root. It’s helped set up the Freetown Youth Climate Council, trained young people in climate leadership and project management, and developed a Youth Climate Advocacy Toolkit now used in local schools and youth organisations.
Paris
Across Paris, youth are building and leading their own advocacy projects on climate action and biodiversity with the help of the city’s Climate Academy. Since 2018, the project has successfully transformed 200 elementary schoolyards, replacing asphalt with grass, plants, and natural shade, and improving the city’s water management. As a result, schools have become places that better protect children from extreme heat, support their health and learning, and give them a better everyday quality of life.
Quezon City
Quezon City is protecting its students from extreme heat, flooding, and other climate-related risks by treating them as stewards of nature. Through its Citizen Science Program, the city runs leadership workshops on biodiversity alongside hands-on community science projects. From greening the city and reducing flood risks to strengthening climate literacy, the project is turning schools into cooler, greener spaces that protect students and build climate awareness for the next generation.
London
Central to London’s broader equity and inclusion goals, young people are being directly engaged through focus groups, workshops, “Democracy Cafes” and the Talk London platform to help shape the city’s Heat Risk Delivery Plan. Ideas have ranged from passive cooling to public awareness campaigns and are now built into the plan’s implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
Rio de Janeiro
In Rio de Janeiro, marginalised youth, including those from peripheral Black, Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ communities, are being trained to become climate delegates in their own right. Through the Young Climate Negotiators Programme, they’re building both the practical and theoretical skills to join the international conversation and advocate locally, regionally and on UN climate agendas.
Youth action is most powerful when it’s backed by real city resources, funding, and governance structures. Mayors must work alongside youth to ensure solutions are not only inclusive but co-created and co-owned with the communities they serve.