Students lead the call for action on climate change in environment summit

Young people from Greater Manchester and Lancashire are leading the call for effective action on climate change after taking part in a environment summit at the Laudato Si’ Centre.

More than 40 students from secondary schools across the area met to share ideas and solutions to tackle some of the biggest environmental challenges we face today, and to help instil a culture of hope and agency within our communities.

The schools that took part were All Hallows RC High School (Salford), Brownedge St Mary’s Catholic High School (Bamber Bridge), St Bede’s High School (Blackburn), St Damian’s RC Science College (Ashton-under-Lyne), Our Lady’s RC High School (Blackley), St Peter’s RC High School (Manchester).

The day included a range of powerful and inspiring sessions, which saw students present their ideas for a more sustainable future, before taking part in tree planting and meditation sessions, and finally burying a time capsule of their hopes and ideas.

Speaking about the future, students wanted to see big changes to how we go about our everyday lives; from a change in how we travel both locally and further afield, how we deal with waste and recycle materials, how we source energy, and how we care for the environment around us.

However, the students also felt a heavy responsibility to lead the way in making this change, and are calling on those with more power and agency to help affect that change.

One student from Our Lady’s RC High School said: “I’m very worried about the future and I also feel like with the environment and how things are going, what we really, really need to do is not only take small actions ourselves but apply pressure to those in power because they make a lot of the decisions.”

Another student said: “It feels like the people in power and older generations aren’t doing enough because it’s not affecting them directly, but it will affect us in the coming years, so I feel it’s important for us to always have a voice, to share what we believe in and to make change happen.”

A third added said: “I’ve loved seeing so many young people like myself here today being so enthusiastic because we need to join up as a young generation to help combat climate change.”

The summit comes on the back of a dynamic programme from the Guardians of Creation project – an initiative that is working to bring a more sustainable future to the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and that is being piloted in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford.

This programme invited students from across the area to learn more about the environmental challenges we face, the call of the Catholic Church to care for our common home, and to use scientific and technological knowledge to explore sustainable solutions.

Ruth-Anne Walbank, Research Associate at St Mary’s University – one of the partners of the Guardians of Creation project – organised the summit to bring these ideas together.

She said: “This summit is the concluding event of a pilot research project with over 200 students across the Diocese of Salford, called Laudato Si’ Champions. As part of a wider research initiative about sustainability in Catholic communities, this education programme looks at how we can cultivate a sense of climate hope with young people, finding solidarity in community actions and love for the natural world as we take environmental action in schools.”

Click here to hear more about the event and what the students had to say to BBC Radio Manchester! (1hr10 mins in)