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This commentary suggests that undertaking citizen science research with young people has the potential to play a significant role in contributing to the IPPC and related UN research and policy processes around climate change. Further, citizen science engagement can educate and empower children and young people in and through research by involving wider communities and groups in data collection, communication, and engagement. A persuasive body of literature suggests that children and youth can be and ought to be included in citizen science projects and that young people ought to and can have a greater say in their environmental and climate lives and futures. There is acknowledgment that certain populations, including young people, have been excluded from participation in citizen science, and strategies need to be developed to be more inclusive. Moreover, through inclusion of youth, there are opportunities for intergeneration collaboration leading to potential solutions. Our commentary is a call for the IPCC to be much more open and creative in its knowledge production work and to engage young people in climate-related citizen science.

In this paper, we argue for the importance of application and safeguarding of the ‘environmental rights of children,’ and further argue that an understanding of children’s perspectives towards nature and their rights to a viable and healthy environment can help both educational and policy development. To that end, we present a case study of preliminary qualitative research conducted in the United Kingdom that asks children themselvestheir views and degree of exposure to the natural environment. This research is underpinned by an environmental rights-based approach for environmental education, and a novel argument for incorporating children’s own understandings and perspectives in application of environmental rights. We conclude with recommendations for strengthening children’s environmental engagement, protection of rights, and education, and recognize that there is a need for further research to better understand children’s perspectives to their own environmental rights.

This paper evaluates an approach for strengthening environmental rights for children to safeguard child health. We focus on children as beneficiaries of environmental rights on account of their vulnerability to environmental impacts on their physical and mental health. Current legal frameworks, unless explicitly identifying children as beneficiaries, arguably tend to be adult-centric. Our goal here is to develop a comprehensive rights-based framework to ensure that children are protected against adverse environmental impacts. We argue that approaches that safeguard childrens rights to life, health, and education should include environment-related issues, standards, and protections for those rights to be fully implemented. We propose employing sustainable development as a framework under which to develop an international treaty to promulgate the environmental rights of the child, thereby promoting health, environmental stewardship, and quality of life for children and future generations. We further argue that childrens environmental rights extend beyond basic needs-such as clean air, clean water, sanitation, and a healthful environment, among others-to include the right to benefit from access to nature of a certain quality and the wealth of educational, recreational, developmental, and health benefits that come with ensuring protection of the environment for children.

The potential impacts of fracking on the environment and health, as well as impacts on local communities and their quality of life, are well documented. This paper outlines the potential human rights impacts of fracking and argues for a human rights-based, participatory, and justice-based approach to regulation. In particular, it discusses the findings of the recent Permanent Peoples Tribunal session on human rights, fracking, and climate change, held in Oregon, United States, and the potential impact of the tribunals decision on other jurisdictions where fracking takes place, particularly England.

• The UK's Committee on Climate Change suggest up to 195 MtCO 2 pa of removal is possible. • Scale up of Greenhouse Gas Removal requires more than technical and least cost considerations. • In the UK there is an adapted and unplanned governance framework which is inadequate. • Procedural Justice mechanisms are unsuitable and weak failing to engage the wider national public. • There is a lack of understanding of the scale at which socio-legal governance is required. Greenhouse gas removal (GGR) is increasingly seen as a key dimension of national and international climate policy. The need to deploy a portfolio of GGR technologies in order to decarbonise sectors with the 'hardest-to-abate' emissions, particularly to achieve net-zero emissions targets, has become increasingly evident in recent years. In May 2019, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) published a report outlining a pathway to net-zero emissions in the UK, which comprised significant contributions from engineered and land-based removals. The target of net-zero emissions has since been enshrined in UK legislation, meaning that GGR will likely be part of the UK's climate strategy. Plans for GGR deployment will therefore need to be set in motion in the short-term, in order to align with the timeframe proposed by the CCC. Despite a growing body of research examining the role governance could and should play in GGR development and deployment, there is a gap in the literature relating to the social implications of removal activities. In particular, the roles of procedural justice (PJ) and social legitimacy (SL) have not been closely examined. This study comprises an analysis of relevant legislation, combined with a series of interviews conducted in the community of Selby (a proposed location for BECCS development) in order to investigate PJ and SL in the context of GGR. It is found that the existing legal framework operates PJ as a 'tick-the-box' exercise, failing to engage a wide range of interested stakeholders or to promote meaningful engagements. Moreover, the PJ landscape for GGR is unplanned and adapted from existing legislation and cannot meet the unique needs of this novel activity, such as the need to engage the wider national public given their interest in climate change mitigation. Research in Selby corroborates these findings, revealing a range of issues with engagement procedures, including disinterest or disillusionment with processes, a lack of accessible information, and a disparity between stakeholder expectations and GGR realities. Ultimately, it is only by conducting meaningful engagements, which adequately inform and include participants, that the role of social legitimacy can truly be understood and thus leveraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]