As climate disasters escalate, from Nigeria’s deadly floods to record heatwaves scorching Europe and North America, the next chapter of climate action hinges on those already rewriting the narrative.
While policymakers debate timelines and carbon pledges, a new generation of leaders is driving urgent action from the grassroots upward.
These voices, from Kenya’s forests to Nigeria’s youth coalitions and digital campaigns led in European cities, are not waiting for permission. They are shaping solutions, holding governments and corporations to account, and demanding that climate justice, not just emissions reduction, be the compass of global action.
Whether in Greta Thunberg’s marches, Elizabeth Wathuti’s tree-planting campaigns, or Olumide Idowu’s policy work in Nigeria, these individuals are proving that meaningful change often starts far from centers of power. Their demands, for equity, urgency, and resilience, grow louder as the planet edges closer to breaching the 1.5°C threshold.
“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” Antonio Guterres.
The question is no longer whether we will act, but whether we will act in time, and on the scale this crisis demands.
The Leaders and the Movements They Power
- Greta Thunberg – Founder, Fridays for Future, Sweden.
Greta Thunberg was just 15 when she began skipping school to protest outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018, holding a handmade sign that read “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (School Strike for Climate).
What began as a solo protest quickly evolved into a global youth movement, Fridays for Future, now active in over 100 countries with millions of participants. By 2020, the movement had mobilized over 7.6 million people across more than 150 nations during the Global Climate Strike.
Fridays for Future calls for urgent action to meet the 1.5°C warming limit outlined in the Paris Agreement, and holds political leaders accountable through non-violent protest and digital mobilization.
Thunberg’s speeches at the United Nations Climate Summit, COP gatherings, and the World Economic Forum have become defining moments in global climate discourse , sharply critiquing world leaders for “empty words” and “blah blah blah.”
In 2019, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, named Time’s Person of the Year, and listed among Forbes’ World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. Despite international fame, Thunberg continues to reject celebrity culture, emphasizing that the crisis demands science, not stardom.
“I don’t want your hope,” she told world leaders at Davos. “I want you to panic.”
Under her influence, Fridays for Future has championed causes from indigenous land rights in Brazil to climate reparations for the Global South, evolving from a strike movement to a coordinated youth climate justice platform.
- Antonio Guterres – Secretary-General, United Nations, Portugal.
As the world’s top diplomat, António Guterres has become one of the most unflinching voices on climate breakdown within global governance.
Since assuming office as UN Secretary-General in 2017, Guterres has used every major platform, from COP summits to UN General Assemblies, to issue urgent calls for decarbonization, equity, and climate finance, often rebuking governments for failing to meet their climate pledges.
In 2022, he declared the global response to climate change “grossly inadequate,” warning that the world is “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe.” His advocacy is supported by stark IPCC findings, including projections that the planet could breach the 1.5°C threshold by the early 2030s if current emissions trends persist.
Guterres has consistently championed climate justice, emphasizing the need for richer nations to fulfill their $100 billion annual finance commitments to developing countries. Under his leadership, the UN launched initiatives like the Climate Action Summit and the Early Warnings for All campaign, aimed at protecting vulnerable communities from extreme weather shocks.
In 2023, he called for an end to “the fossil fuel age,” urging governments to ban fossil fuel advertising and impose windfall taxes on oil companies profiting during a planetary emergency.
“Fossil fuel interests need to be confronted,” he said at a major climate finance event. “Delaying the inevitable is not a strategy, it is a death sentence.”
Beyond speeches, Guterres has helped legitimize youth, Indigenous, and African climate voices on global platforms, pushing for an inclusive and people-centered approach to climate diplomacy.
- Elizabeth Wathuti — Founder, Green Generation Initiative, Head of Campaigns, Wangari Maathai Foundation, Kenya.
Elizabeth Wathuti stands out as one of Africa’s leading youth climate advocates, combining on-the-ground action with powerful global advocacy.
Hailing from Kenya’s Nyeri County, the same region as Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, she founded the Green Generation Initiative (GGI) in 2016 to inspire environmental stewardship among young people and combat deforestation.
Through GGI, over 30,000 indigenous trees have been planted, and climate education programs have been introduced in schools across the country. Wathuti’s work goes beyond reforestation, linking environmental justice with food and water security and advocating for greater youth involvement in governance.
“The decisions you make today will determine whether children will have food and water tomorrow,” she told leaders at COP.
Her passionate speech at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, urging world leaders to “open their hearts” to climate-stricken communities, earned a standing ovation and global recognition, cementing her role as a voice for climate justice.
Since then, Wathuti has continued her advocacy through the Wangari Maathai Foundation, the UNEP Youth Task Force, and the Global Youth Biodiversity Network.
She champions climate solutions that center youth, women, and rural communities, earning her accolades such as the Green Climate Fund Youth Champion and a place among the 100 Most Influential Young Africans.
Wathuti represents a new generation of African leadership that bridges grassroots impact with international influence.
- Olumide Idowu – Co-Founder, Nigerian Youth Climate Coalition, and Founder, International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI Africa), Nigeria.
Olumide Idowu, often called “Mr. Climate,” is a leading figure in Nigeria’s climate advocacy landscape, with more than a decade of work advancing youth leadership and environmental education across Africa.
As co-founder of the Nigerian Youth Climate Coalition and founder of the International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI Africa), he has mobilized a powerful network of young advocates.
Through ICCDI, he has trained over 10,000 youth in green entrepreneurship, climate literacy, and environmental journalism across more than 20 African countries.
His grassroots programs, from tree planting to waste management and resilient agriculture, directly support underserved communities while promoting climate resilience.
Beyond local impact, Idowu has played an influential role on global platforms, representing Nigeria at COP summits, the UN Major Group for Children and Youth, and the Global Environment Facility.
He also advised on youth engagement for Nigeria’s revised Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Known for his sharp communication style, he uses storytelling and media to bring climate issues closer to ordinary citizens.
As he stated during a 2022 youth roundtable,
“African youth don’t just need seats at the table, we need tools to build our own.”
Olumide’s growing influence reflects not just policy expertise but a deep commitment to centering rural, urban, and marginalized voices in shaping Nigeria’s climate future.
- Bill McKibben – Founder, 350.org, and Co-Founder, Third Act, U.S.A.
Bill McKibben is a pioneering voice in the climate movement, known for bringing public awareness to global warming long before it became mainstream.
His 1989 book The End of Nature was the first popular work to explain climate change to a general audience, marking the start of a decades-long campaign for environmental action. As the founder of 350.org, McKibben built the first truly global grassroots climate movement, organizing over 20,000 rallies in more than 180 countries.
The organization’s name refers to 350 parts per million, the maximum safe level of atmospheric CO₂, which the world has long surpassed. Under his leadership, the group was instrumental in landmark actions like halting the Keystone XL pipeline and pressuring institutions to divest from fossil fuels.
One of McKibben’s most influential contributions has been the Fossil Fuel Divestment Initiative, which has driven over $40 trillion in assets to cut ties with coal, oil, and gas industries.
In recent years, he expanded his focus with Third Act, a campaign mobilizing Americans over 60 to fight for climate justice and democratic reforms, forging a powerful alliance between generations.
“The most important thing an individual can do is be a little less of an individual and join together with others,” he often says, emphasizing the need for collective actions.
Through writings in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The New York Times, and continued on-the-ground organizing, McKibben remains a guiding force in the push for a livable planet.
- Fatou Jeng – Founder, Clean Earth Gambia, and UN Women Gender and Climate Advisor, Gambia.
Fatou Jeng, founder of Clean Earth Gambia and UN Women Gender and Climate Advisor, stands as one of Africa’s most dynamic youth climate leaders.
Launching her activism as a teenager in response to the climate threats facing her homeland, including sea-level rise and desertification, she has since mobilized thousands across The Gambia. Through Clean Earth Gambia, her grassroots initiative has empowered over 6,000 young people, especially women and girls, across five regions.
They have led campaigns on plastic pollution, tree planting, and coastal protection, while also fostering local dialogues that fuse gender rights with climate resilience.
Jeng’s impact goes far beyond community organizing. She helped shape Gambia’s updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), advocating for youth-led and gender-responsive climate policies.
As a civil society negotiator at COP25 and later a UN Women advisor, she has elevated the voices of African women in global climate forums.
Recognized by Forbes Africa’s 30 Under 30 and the Top 100 African Youths in Climate Action, her work exemplifies a new era of climate diplomacy rooted in lived experience and inclusive leadership. As she declared at COP27:
“We are not just vulnerable populations, we are capable leaders. Climate justice without gender justice is incomplete.”
- Naomi Klein – Author, Activist, and Theorist of Climate Justice, and Co-founder, Leap Manifesto, Canada.
Naomi Klein has emerged as one of the most powerful voices bridging climate change with systemic injustice.
With her landmark 2014 book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, she forcefully argued that solving the climate crisis demands dismantling the very economic systems, particularly fossil fuel capitalism, that created it.
“There are no non-radical solutions left,” she warned in 2022. “We either radically change the economy or we radically change the planet.”
Through works like No Logo and On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, Klein has redefined climate discourse, framing it as a moral and political battle deeply entangled with colonization, corporate exploitation, and global inequality.
Klein’s impact extends beyond the page. In 2015, she co-authored the Leap Manifesto, a bold Canadian policy blueprint calling for Indigenous sovereignty, fossil fuel divestment, and a worker-led transition to 100% renewable energy.
It became a flashpoint in Canadian politics and helped inspire international Green New Deal movements. As a frequent speaker at UN climate forums and the first Gloria Steinem Chair at Rutgers University, Klein continues to challenge mainstream narratives around climate action.
Her critiques of “disaster capitalism” and climate profiteering have shaped civil society demands for justice-first solutions. In her vision, climate activism is not only about emissions, it is about reimagining society itself.
- Wangari Muchiri – Africa Director, Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), and Former Policy Lead, Africa Energy Transition Partnership, Kenya.
Wangari Muchiri is a driving force behind Africa’s clean energy transition, leading efforts to scale up wind power and position the continent as a leader in renewable innovation.
As Africa Director at the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), she works with governments, investors, and civil society to integrate wind energy into national power grids, especially in wind-rich countries like Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, and South Africa.
With over 59,000 TWh of untapped wind potential in Africa, Muchiri has lobbied for transparent permitting systems, robust investment frameworks, and policies that prioritize community benefits and gender inclusion.
“Africa’s energy future is not fossil-fuelled, it’s decentralized, inclusive, and renewable,” she declared at the 2023 African Climate Summit in Nairobi.
A trained mechanical engineer and seasoned policy expert, Muchiri brings a rare blend of technical and diplomatic skill to the climate table. Her previous work at the Africa Energy Transition Partnership saw her guiding national governments on energy roadmaps aligned with SDG 7 and the Paris Agreement.
Today, she also collaborates with universities and grassroots groups to demystify clean energy and promote climate literacy. Her 2023 research on climate finance access in sub-Saharan Africa called for urgent reforms to ensure equitable investment in local projects.
Whether at regional forums or rural workshops, Muchiri is reimagining the continent’s power sector, not just to cut emissions, but to fuel jobs, resilience, and justice.
- Dr. Hoesung Lee – Former Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Professor Emeritus, Korea University, South Korea.
Dr. Hoesung Lee, former Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), played a defining role in reshaping global climate discourse during his 2015–2023 tenure.
His leadership culminated in the release of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), a foundational scientific analysis that alerted the world to the diminishing window for climate action.
Most notably, the IPCC’s 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, released under his watch, was a turning point: it established that even half a degree of additional warming would drastically increase the severity of climate impacts, from sea-level rise to food insecurity.
“The decisions we make now will reverberate for hundreds, even thousands, of years,” he told world leaders at COP26. “Science has spoken. Now, it is up to policy.”
With a background in economics and energy systems, Dr. Lee brought a pragmatic lens to climate science, highlighting not just the environmental urgency, but the economic feasibility of transition, especially for developing countries.
He consistently championed equitable climate action and a just transition model that would leave no one behind. Through over 100 academic publications and advisory roles with the UNFCCC, OECD, and ADB, he bridged the worlds of science, policy, and diplomacy.
His tenure marked a shift in climate communication: data-driven, bold, and unflinching in calling for systemic change, his leadership empowered climate advocates and policymakers alike to act on evidence, and act fast.
- Xiye Bastida – Youth Climate Activist & Co-founder, Re-Earth Initiative Member, Otomi-Toltec Indigenous Nation, Mexico/United States.
Xiye Bastida is a powerful youth climate leader whose activism uniquely blends environmental justice with Indigenous knowledge and decolonial thought.
Growing up in Mexico’s Otomi-Toltec community, she experienced firsthand the destructive impact of climate change through severe droughts and floods that eventually displaced her family.
Relocating to New York, she transformed personal loss into public action, rising to prominence within the Fridays for Future USA movement and co-founding the Re-Earth Initiative in 2020.
“We are not just fighting for a livable planet,” she said in a widely viewed TED Talk. “We are fighting for a world that is rooted in respect, reciprocity, and repair.”
Through Re-Earth, Bastida champions intersectional climate advocacy that centers Indigenous voices, frontline communities, and marginalized youth. Her organization has mobilized over 120,000 young people across more than 60 countries through educational campaigns and policy-focused workshops.
By grounding her activism in Indigenous philosophy, which sees the Earth as a living system with rights, Bastida is reshaping climate discourse globally.
Recognized by TIME’s 100 Next, BBC 100 Women, and the United Nations Foundation, she continues to be a moral force in youth-led climate diplomacy, offering a vision that is not just sustainable, but rooted in ancestral resilience and justice.
The Numbers Behind the Crisis
The climate emergency is backed by stark, undeniable data.
In 2023, the planet recorded its hottest year yet, with average global temperatures reaching 1.48°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), inching dangerously close to the 1.5°C threshold identified by the IPCC as the line between manageable and catastrophic warming.
Sea levels are now rising at 3.3 mm per year, and over 90% of global disasters are linked to climate events, from floods and heatwaves to wildfires. The crisis hits unequally: Africa, responsible for less than 4% of global emissions, faces outsized consequences.
“Climate change is punishing the poor,” said Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General.
In Nigeria’s northeast, desertification and drought have already displaced over 2.6 million people, the UNHCR reports. Meanwhile, fossil fuel subsidies exceeded $1 trillion globally in 2022, while rich countries continue to fall short of the $100 billion annual climate finance pledge for developing nations, first promised in 2009.
Still, there is measurable hope. Solar energy costs have fallen by 89% in a decade, and renewable energy capacity is forecast to expand by 2,400 GW by 2027, equaling China’s entire current power output.
“The numbers don’t lie,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme. “They tell us we’re not just running out of time, we are out of excuses.”
With the crisis quantified and solutions increasingly affordable, the challenge now lies in political will, global solidarity, and urgent implementation.
A Conclusive Appreciation
The climate crisis has shifted from a distant forecast to a present-day emergency, impacting every continent through extreme weather, rising sea levels, wildfires, and droughts.
Scientists warn that the world is dangerously close to surpassing the 1.5°C warming threshold, a boundary that, if breached, could unleash irreversible tipping points like polar ice melt and rainforest collapse.
This brought us to a conclusive appreciation of the climate actors around the world.
Whether through science, advocacy, education, or grassroots action, the climate actors are igniting movements, empowering communities, and reminding the world that a just, sustainable future is within reach.
In a time of urgency, they bring vision. In a world of uncertainty, they offer direction. Their works inspire not just hope, but action, and for that, the planet, and generations to come, are deeply grateful.
