Energy & Climate
‘Listen to the CCC’
Youth activists unveil banner in Westminster Hall as landmark report released.
27 February 2025
This article first appeared in our Organic September 2026 issue of My Green Pod Magazine, published 09 September 2026. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Main image: UKY4N is campaigning to end the routine use of pesticides in public spaces
There’s a particular kind of hope that comes from watching a 16-year-old stand up in front of an MP and ask, plainly, why their local council still sprays nature-harming pesticides on the pavement outside their school or homes.
It’s the hope of UK Youth for Nature (UKY4N), a UK-wide movement of 16- to 35-year-olds who believe young people can – and should – shape the future of nature and be at the heart of decision-making.
Founded in 2020 and formalised under co-directors since September 2022, UKY4N exists on a simple but radical premise: you don’t need a background in ecology, policy or campaigning to fight for nature. You just need to care.
The organisation’s volunteer-led structure, spanning specialist task forces for webinars, podcasts, TikTok, policy and campaigns, grew from five to 10 active volunteers in 2021 into a genuinely national network – with formal safeguarding, EDI and governance structures. It is now the leading UK youth movement for nature.
UKY4N currently runs two flagship campaigns designed to turn youth energy into real political change. Not So Freshwater tackles agricultural pollution issues in our UK freshwater systems.
The campaign focuses on building relationships with MPs and hosting impactful events like the Chemical Cocktail Bar, where young campaigners influenced policy and showcased how youth-led action can make a positive difference.
The Your Wild Streets campaign tackles something closer to home: the routine spraying of pesticides on parks, pavements and verges, which strips biodiversity from urban spaces and exposes communities and pollinators to unnecessary toxins.
The campaign runs annual Urban Nature Days in cities across England and has secured a petition with over 300 signatures, pushing Newcastle City Council towards a full pesticide debate. It is also working alongside Sian Berry MP’s push for a national ban on urban pesticides.
The thing that makes UKY4N distinct in what could already be considered a crowded sector of established environmental charities is its insistence on staying youth-led rather than becoming, in the words of one review, ‘another youth wing of a large environmental NGO’.
Each and every UKY4N campaign is designed and delivered by volunteers, who are trained to write briefings, speak to the press and meet directly with decision-makers – sometimes for the first time in their lives.
This September, that philosophy will be brought to life across three major moments.
On 08 September, UKY4N will team up with Butterfly Conservation for Wild Fringe at The Station in Bristol. The evening will interrogate what the nature sector is getting wrong.
Two panels will address uncomfortable questions: award-winning author and Curlew Action director Mary Colwell will join wildlife podcaster Ryan Dalton and award-winning climate activist Domi Palmer to discuss why the environmental movement needs to acknowledge the interconnectedness of nature, people and justice.
A second panel, featuring Ealing Beaver Project’s Urban Beaver Officer and grassroots community organisers, will explore what happens when individuals stop waiting for institutions and start building their own solutions.
The following day (09 September), those same conversations will be carried into the Wild Summit, hosted by the Wildlife and Countryside Link. Running its own session on the Wild Summit’s Youth & Early Careers Programme, UKY4N Waves of Change: Crafting for Cleaner Rivers will be a hands-on craftivism workshop connecting the Not So Freshwater campaign’s fight against agricultural pollution to a communal art piece destined for Parliament.
On 19 September, UKY4N’s flagship Urban Nature Day will land at Wolves Lane in London. Each year the event moves to a different UK city – including Liverpool, Bristol and Newcastle – to celebrate urban wildlife. With craftivism, nature journaling, seed ball making and skill-shares, it invites young people who might not see themselves as environmentalists but are curious and eager to get involved.
Behind the scenes, UKY4N will also launch a new schools and youth group programme this September. The fully funded, interactive workshop for KS4 and KS5 students will go far beyond a one-off assembly. Delivered in partnership with schools across the UK, each two-hour session will equip 15 to 30 students with the tools to design and run their own environmental campaign, whether that’s tackling pesticide use on their own school grounds or building a biodiversity project in their community.
Crucially, it doesn’t stop at the workshop: every participating school will receive some seed funding to actually deliver their idea, plus ongoing mentoring from UKY4N.
UKY4N already has a track record for effecting change; it has secured commitments from sitting MPs, put youth voices in front of Senedd members ahead of the 2026 Welsh elections and built a pipeline of young people who go on to lead in the wider environmental sector – which has been described as the movement’s ‘true legacy’.
What strikes me most, having spent the past few years watching this organisation grow, is its refusal to be tidy. UKY4N doesn’t do direct action in the vein of Just Stop Oil, but it isn’t content with polite lobbying either. It occupies a genuinely useful, occasionally spiky middle ground, creative enough to get a bee costume and a billboard campaign talked about locally, political enough to get an Early Day Motion supported in Parliament.
In July I stepped into that work more closely than ever when I joined UK Youth for Nature as the organisation’s co-director. Having seen what it has achieved – from its scrappy early wins to its steady professionalisation and its unwavering insistence that young people belong in every room where decisions about nature’s future are made – I couldn’t be more excited to help shape what comes next.
If Wild Fringe, the Wild Summit or Urban Nature Day sound like your kind of September, I’d love to see you there.
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