'A world with climate justice is a better world': Meet the young Irish people fighting for the environment
Activist Flossie Donnelly has come across all sorts of unexpected items on the beaches of Ireland – credit cards, watches, expensive phones, engagement rings and even a small treasure chest.
“That was in the rocks near Dun Laoghaire Pier,” recalls the 17-year-old. “There was nothing hugely valuable in it; some bracelets and baby teeth and the like. We found the woman who owned it. Her house had been burgled and that was the only thing she missed because it had huge sentimental value. So it was nice to reunite her with that.”
Flossie, who has lived in nearby Sandycove all her life, has been cleaning beaches since she was nine years old. Though she often comes across valuable items, this is one teenager who has very little interest in ‘stuff’. Instead, her focus is on fixing and maintaining the treasure we all share – the planet.
“When I started, I made posters and put them up around the neighbourhood,” she recalls.
“The big day came and no one arrived. It was just me and my mum on the beach. The next day I bumped into a local politician named Cormac Devlin. I told him I had started a beach clean group. He advised me to use social media and he reposted my first post.”
Flossie Donnelly on South Anne Street, Dublin during a protest by Extinction Rebellion Ireland and allies during a rally to highlight the biodiversity crisis in Ireland. Pic: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos
Flossie Donnelly on South Anne Street, Dublin during a protest by Extinction Rebellion Ireland and allies during a rally to highlight the biodiversity crisis in Ireland. Pic: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos
At the group’s second meeting over two dozen people showed and since then Flossie and the Beach Cleaners has grown from a small local group to a charity with volunteers from all over the country.
“People started asking if they could donate money,” explains Flossie. “I was slowly getting more of a voice and people wanted to hear what I had to say. I’ve always wanted to educate people about the sea. It has a huge part to play in climate change. It stores a lot more carbon than a tree but there’s no education about it. So the charity allows us to go to primary schools and give workshops about our planet and the sea and we bring children on beach cleans. It’s something that we need to learn about, and children soak it up like sponges.”
The science around Climate Change has been around for some time and though some would deny it, the anecdotal evidence – unseasonal flooding, unprecedented forest fires, famine, drought – is mounting every year. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that urgent action is needed to avoid seeing an increase in these phenomena.
Though moves have been made by global powers to mitigate against the causes and their outcomes, there is a sense that climate change needs to hit the richest among us in the pocket and significantly hamper our lifestyles, particularly in the West, before governments take real and effective measures.
Jessica Dunne from Dublin, marching alongside pro-transgender demonstrators protesting in the city. Pic: Leah Farrell/© RollingNews.ie
Jessica Dunne from Dublin, marching alongside pro-transgender demonstrators protesting in the city. Pic: Leah Farrell/© RollingNews.ie
For activist Jessica Dunne, the lack of urgency is simply a continuation of a political and economic zeitgeist that has existed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
“When you look at the climate crisis through an intersectional lens, you start to realise that it relates to every other social issue that’s happening right now,” says the twenty-year-old.
“The climate crisis is a crisis of exploitation of both people and the planet. It relates to racism, colonialism, sexism and a host of other problems. It all comes from those same systems of oppression that treat the world and people like commodities. People who are the most marginalised in our society are going to see the impact of climate change more intensely.”
And when she talks about people on the margins she is not just talking about the thousands coming to these shores in search of refuge because of wars over resources.
“A really simple and interesting historical example of intersectionality is looking at the way that the travelling community was impacted by the introduction of plastics in Ireland,” she says.
“It severely impacted their livelihood.” This is the sort of (commonly unseen) impact on people, tradition and the environment that kept the young Dubliner awake at night in her early teens.
When she was fourteen, Jessica “had no idea what to do with all of the fear and anxiety” she felt around what she saw. She soon found others who felt just as strongly as she did.
“I remember going to a climate strike and for the first time feeling lifted,” she recalls.
“I was with other people in the same boat as me. But I was doing something towards making the world better rather than being sad about it. I was a kid and I didn’t think I could do anything. Then I saw Greta striking and I remember thinking, ‘I have a voice, I have power and I can do something’.”
She has since used that voice to great effect, giving TED talks and working on the impacts of climate change and climate justice with the likes of UNICEF and Friends of the Earth. At every COP, Jessica is there, making sure our young people’s voices are represented.
“To me, a world with climate justice is ultimately a better world,” she says, “not just because we combat the climate crisis, but also because we tackle the root problems that caused the climate crisis.”
Saoirse Exton: the Western European representative on the seven-member UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group (YAG) on Climate Change
Saoirse Exton: the Western European representative on the seven-member UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group (YAG) on Climate Change
Saoirse Exton started climate striking when she was thirteen years old. Every Friday, her parents would drive her from their home in Limerick to Government Buildings in Dublin where she would spend “nine hours with a sign” and like-minded young people who wanted to see change.
“My parents have always been quite politically engaged,” says the 18-year-old.
“They would always bring me along when they were voting and we’ve always had conversations about things like climate change and inequality in general. It became apparent very quickly that it stopped being a hobby for me and became a necessity. My parents both understood this themselves and saw how strongly I felt.”
Her activism has not waned in the meantime and her passion and calm articulation have been noticed by others.
In early 2023, Saoirse became the Western European representative on the seven-member UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group (YAG) on Climate Change, becoming the group’s youngest-ever member.
While she is rightly proud of what she has done so far, she is more focussed on what needs to be achieved in a short period.
“The environment is one of the most pressing issues we have right now,” she says.
“I think addressing it will be a catalyst for different economic systems, different ways of viewing natural resources and biodiversity in general, different ways of viewing who we are as humans, how we work and live. It will redefine so much of what we have accepted as the status quo which is exploitative and is all about generating wealth. And we can’t have this mindset if we’re going to address the climate crisis.”
Is there hope?
“My hope is like a pendulum,” she says. “When I meet people who care about this, not just the environment but social justice, change, equality and equity, it gives me hope. I’m not completely hopeless but it does shift.”
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