Commentary Greta Thunberg and how Sweden produced such climate superstar activists

From a contemporary viewpoint, the young interrogators’ demands for clean air and sewage treatment appear modest, but during the campaign finale â€" an “environmental parliament” in January 1970 â€" the Swedish minister of agriculture considered it ungrateful of the younger generation to demand change too rapidly.

With stubborn and tireless work, he argued, further environmental destruction would be prevented in due time.

YOUTH-LED ACTIVISM ON GLOBAL ISSUES

Modern Swedish history provides several examples of youth-led activism on global issues. While the Folksam initiative was adult-organised, other campaigns and initiatives have relied on self-organisation by the younger generation.

An early example of this was Fältbiologerna (literally: “the field biologists”), the youth division of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, which became a hotbed for environmental activism.

In addition to hiking in the wilderness, the field biologists started to demonstrate and make spectacular direct actions.

They marched under banners such as “killing nature is suicide” and “your children protest against your short-termism”. In the early 1970s, they mailed disposable bottles and cans to the authorities, to spur a transition to recycling.

Another striking example was the annual campaign Operation Dagsverke, “operation day’s work”, that emerged in the early 1960s.

Led by rather loosely organised student unions, the campaign expanded rapidly and soon involved tens of thousands of schoolchildren, raising money for projects in the global south.

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