Youth and Globalization (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.) journal Vol 7 – Issue 2 is calling for papers under the topic Planetary youth research and young people’s eco-emotions. The issue is published in November 2025 with guest editors Sofia Laine (sofia.laine@youthresearch.fi) and Panu Pihkala (panu.pihkala@helsinki.fi).
Timeline
- Abstract submission deadline: March 24th (roughly 200-300 words). Via email to guest editors.
- Paper’s submission deadline: May 30th, 2025 (9,000 words max). Papers should be submitted through the platform: https://www.editorialmanager.com/yogo/default1.aspx (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.)
- Deadline for the submission of the revised version: September 30th, 2025
- Publication: November 2025
Aim and scope of the issue
As the ecological crisis intensifies, youth research is needed to respond from a youth perspective to the ongoing climate emergency. The 2020s are marked by mass extinctions and climate anomalies that are accelerating in intensity and frequency, but also causing global political turmoil. The scale and scope of the triple planetary crisis (i.e. climate emergency, biodiversity collapse and pervasive pollution) poses an urgent and systemic threat to the rights of children and young people worldwide. Children and young people around the world are currently leading the fight against climate change, demanding that their governments and corporations take action to protect the planet and their future. In its General Comment No. 26, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2023) clearly defines the rights of children in relation to the environment that societies should collectively and urgently respect, protect and fulfill. The depth of the ecological crisis – or the comprehensive crisis that can be called, for example, a polycrisis (Henig et al. 2023) – challenges all kinds of developmental tasks, but also the very models of human lifespan development (for a useful overview, see Ivtzan et al. 2015, 31-54). We who can still research and write have an ethical obligation to pursue the rights of all, including those who are already fighting every day to stay alive.
Imperialism and colonialism have destroyed lifeworlds throughout their existence, and it is not the fault of young people. Young people are also strongly dismayed by the lack of ambition in global climate politics (Hickman et al. 2021). All this raises several key questions for youth research in our time. How should youth researchers work with young people and future generations? How to talk about a hostile future with young people and how to live with a worsening situation on a daily basis? What should be the public role of youth research in shaping our societies to better respect planetary boundaries? What empirical knowledge do we have about young people’s actions, living conditions, attitudes and emotions in relation to the ongoing planetary crisis? How are youth researchers and youth workers themselves coping with all the crises, and how could they be supported by research and policy?
Planetary youth research is a new framework proposal (Laine 2023) that tries to support youth research to turn towards a ‘global ethic’. It has four emphases, in short: 1) research that investigates how to achieve sustainable living conditions for future generations, together with young people if possible; 2) decolonial youth research, global South youth research and research on planetary citizenship (e.g. Salonen et al. 2024); 3) analysing young people’s relationships with nature and planetary wellbeing (e.g. Elo et. al. 2023); and 4) exploring more sustainable and ethical ways to balance action, emotion and rest in the more-than-human world (e.g. Pihkala 2023).
This special issue welcomes a wide range of theoretical and empirical articles that discuss, in one way or another, how youth research can contribute to finding solutions to the dilemmas involved in achieving sustainable well-being for all living beings and for the planet itself. We ask contributors to critically discuss the relationship of their proposals to the new model of Planetary youth research (Laine 2023), and we are especially interested about dynamics of climate emotions, from grief (see more Pihkala 2024a), fear (see more McQueen 2021) and biophobia to love and joy related to young people’s multi-species dialogue and their diverse environments (Pihkala 2022a). In particular, we welcome articles that focus on young climate activists – and on working together with them. Below, we briefly discuss some potential themes related to this.
Community-level and intergenerational climate actions & dynamics of engaging with climate emotions (or other eco-emotions)
We welcome innovative studies that analyse community-level environmental actions from the perspective of young people and/or intergenerational relationships. Children and young people often report feeling that adults do not understand or validate their climate-related actions nor emotions, including grief (e.g. Diffey et al. 2022; Jones and Davison 2021). The challenge and opportunity of addressing children’s climate anxiety and grief is a necessary community task: it involves parents, relatives, neighbours, educators, social and health workers, and so on. In this community task, different kinds of psychological expertise are an essential part of the team to address the emotional sides of our ecological crisis. Adults’ developmental tasks also need attention, and parents and grandparents are examples of groups that need further social support in order to fulfill parenting in relation to poycrisis (see e.g. Pihkala 2024b). More studies on compassion, community responsibility and safe spaces would be needed (cf. the growing popularity of climate-related death cafes) (see Weber 2020; Climate Psychology Alliance 2022).
Ecological grief and climate grief. Studies on collective grieving
Ecological grief and climate grief have been observed to affect a large number of people today, and young people have reported these feelings more than adults. In principle, feelings of sadness and grief processes help people to engage with losses (Pihkala 2024a), but there can appear various complications. Some of the severe forms include the rising generational theme of not having children due to climate crisis (e.g. Krähenbuhl 2022) as well as climate- and pollution-driven migration. Ecological mourning is often difficult for several reasons: there are so many losses, they are often threatening, and there is commonly a lack of coping skills. There are also cultural politics of emotion around ecological grief, and many kinds of social dynamics and power structures that need attention. Ecological grief can be devalued and become disenfranchised if social support and recognition are missing. The ability to collectively grieve different climate losses can also have a very important political aspect. We invite papers which study dynamics of climate grief either among youth themselves or specifically in the relations between youth and adults (e.g. possible disenfranchised grief and ways to overcome it).
Process Model of Eco-anxiety and Grief. Social practices analysis
Pihkala’s recent model (2022b), based on a review of research in many disciplines, depicts chronological phases and thematic dimensions. We invite papers which explore related dynamics among youth. For example, it is well known that young climate activists often work so hard in activism that they downplay rest and distancing, at a psychological cost. We are especially interested in social practices which support action, emotional engagement, and distancing (self-care, community care): especially studies that analyses more ethical and psychologically balanced ways of doing environmental activism, or doing climate research.
Environmentally active young people and the more-than-human world
How can young people’s natural curiosity and motivation to engage with nature be supported, ultimately enhancing their connection with nature? What are the benefits of integrating outdoor adventures into young people’s everyday lives? We seek analyses of youth climate and nature agency in relation to ‘witnessing and supporting professionals’ (i.e. youth workers, teachers, youth researchers), as well as explorations of how the field of youth research can move forward and enable greater youth participation. In general, we seek contributions that situate young people and climate change in relation to intergenerational communication, class, coloniality, disability, place, race, emotions and other dimensions of power and identity.
Submissions
We welcome both theoretical and empirical articles with a word limit of max. 9000 words (including references). Please follow Youth and Globalization’s submission guidelines (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). As you can see, the issue will be made and published in a rather short time, so this is both a challenge and a possibility to get research published relatively quickly. We kindly invite you to contact the guest editors via email for any questions you may have.
Bios of the guest editors
Sofia Laine is a Research Professor at the Finnish Youth Research Society, Finland. She has a PhD in Development Studies and has actively worked and published on issues related to (more) global youth research, youth engagement and more recently on the concept of planetary youth research. She is also a Dance Movement Therapist (DMT), a resource for developing artistic and creative embodied techniques for conducting youth research. She is the author and editor of several academic books and anthologies. She was awarded the Academic of the Year 2024, in Finland.
E-mail: sofia.laine@youthresearch.fi
Panu Pihkala (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.), specializes in eco-anxiety research at University of Helsinki, Finland. In addition to writing books and research articles, he works as a workshop facilitator. Among other positions of trust, Pihkala serves as an advisor for the Finnish national project on social health-sector responses to eco-anxiety (www.ymparistoahdistus.fi). He hosts the podcast Climate Change and Happiness together with Dr. Thomas Doherty and often co-operates with artists and educators.
E-mail: panu.pihkala@helsinki.fi
References
Climate Psychology Alliance (2022)
Diffey, J., S. Wright, J. O. Uchendu, S. Masithi, A. Olude, D. O. Juma, L. H. Anya, T. Salami, P. R. Mogathala, H. Agarwal, et al. (2022) “Not about us without us” – the feelings and hopes of climate-concerned young people around the world (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). International Review of Psychiatry 34 (5):499–509.
Elo, M., Hytönen, J., Karkulehto, S., Kortetmäki, T., Kotiaho, J.S., Puurtinen, M., & Salo, M. (Eds.). (2023) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being (1st ed.). Routledge.
Henig, D. and Knight, D. M.(2023) Polycrisis: Prompts for an emerging worldview. Anthropology Today 39 (2):3–6.
Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, E.R., Mayell, E.E., Wray, B., Mellor, C., and van Sustagen, L. (2021) Climate Anxiety in Children and Young People and Their Beliefs about Government Responses to Climate Change: A Global Survey (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). The Lancet Planetary Health 5 (12), pp. e863–e873.
Ivtzan, I., T. Lomas, K. Hefferon, and P. Worth (2015) Second wave positive psychology: Embracing the dark side of life. New York: Routledge.
Jones, C. A., and A. Davison. (2021) Disempowering emotions: The role of educational experiences in social responses to climate change (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). Geoforum 118:190–200.
Laine, S. (2023) New Framework Proposal: Planetary Youth Research (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). Youth and Globalization, 5(1), 15-43.
McQueen, A. (2021) ‘The Wages of Fear? Toward Fearing Well About Climate Change’. In Philosophy and Climate Change, edited by Mark Budolfson, Tristram Macpherson, and David Plunkett, 152–77. London: Oxford University Press.
Pihkala, P. (2022a) Toward a Taxonomy of Climate Emotions (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). Frontiers in Psychology 3.
Pihkala, P. (2022b) The Process of Eco-Anxiety and Ecological Grief: A Narrative Review and A New Proposal (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). Sustainability 14 (24), p. 16628.
Pihkala, P. (2024a) Ecological Sorrow: Types of Grief and Loss in Ecological Grief (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). Sustainability, 16, 849.
Pihkala P. (2024b): Climate Anxiety, Maturational Loss, and Adversarial Growth (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child.
Roy, S., and L. Ayalon (2022) Intergenerational relations in the climate movement: Bridging the gap toward a common goal (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 20 (1):233.
Salonen, A.O., Isola, A.-M., Jakonen, JP and Foster, R. (2024). Who and what belongs to us? Towards a comprehensive concept of inclusion and planetary citizenship (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). International Journal of Social Pedagogy, 13(1): 5.
UN (2023, CRC/C/GC/26) General comment No. 26 on children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on climate change (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.).
Weber, J. A. (2020) Climate cure: Heal yourself to heal the planet. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications.
Weintrobe, S. (2021) Psychological roots of the climate crisis: Neoliberal exceptionalism and the culture of uncare. New York: Bloomsbury.