While the climate has continued to worsen, where has the energy of the youth climate movement gone?

Some of the energy that once filled the streets has moved indoors, into party politics, citizen assemblies and the corridors of international institutions. Some of it has changed strategies, testing the righteousness of the law itself through civil disobedience. And in places, it has simply gone silent, as local struggles over transition policy run up against the harder question of what democracy owes the next generation. A new podcast mini-series follows these different trajectories from Paris to Barcelona, Bologna to Geneva, asking what they add up to and what, if anything, is left of the movement's original charge.

Co-hosts Christine Lutringer, Yanina Welp, Maria Mexi and Laura Bullón-Cassis are launching a six-episode podcast mini-series, part of Research at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, bringing youth activists, scholars, policymakers and international organisation representatives into conversation on the future of climate politics, democracy and social justice in Europe.

The series is a public engagement output of the project Youth Climate Activism and Local Institutions: Reframing Democratic Spaces at a Time of Polarisation, which examines how young people across Europe mobilise around climate justice and democratic renewal, and the tensions and synergies that arise as that activism meets local institutions and global governance.

Across six episodes, each combining a short framing introduction with a moderated conversation, the series connects local experience to global debates on just transitions and civic participation.