Culture and Environment “The Peripheral Youth Reinvent the World Every Day”

Cultural producer and climate activist, Marcele Oliveira was selected to be the Youth Climate Champion at COP 30, which will take place in Brazil in 2025. In an interview, she speaks about the importance of that role, lists the challenges ahead, and highlights the need to consider the demands of peripheral youth populations – piercing the bubble to favor changes for the global collective good.

Marcele Oliveira is a cultural producer who, already at the age of 26, knows what change she wants to promote. Born in the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, in Realengo, she grew up impacted by violence and daily tragedies, but, despite such adversity, opted to engage in cultural activities that aim to improve the lives of the residents in her region. To do so, she had to leave her neighborhood to go to school, to work, and notice the discrepancies that mark Rio’s geography. Why is there a lack of public space for leisure activities in certain areas of the city? How does one explain the absence of parks in those areas? Where are the trees? With those concerns, she started to connect culture to climate activism, which most recently culminated in her nomination as Youth Champion at the Climate Conference in Belém, COP 30, which will take place in November 2025.

Since you started engaging in climate activism, has there been any sort of shift in young people’s participation in this context?

The more we talk in a way that young people can understand, the more people will connect with the climate issue. When you talk about “mitigation, loss and damage, COP, negotiations,” likely few people will identify with that. But if we talk about air quality, food quality; if we give names to extreme weather events – floods, heat waves, droughts –; if we talk about the importance of environmental education to protect the places that were part of our history – that beach or that island -; it will be easier to engage the youth. I believe I am seeing a change. More people are empowering themselves and participating in discussions about climate change. More people are feeling the heat and noticing the lack of adaptation in cities. There are more people making the connection between the global and the local, because the global will only advance if the local is connected to it. And the local will only advance if the global is also connected.

You were selected to be the Youth Climate Champion at COP 30. What is your understanding of this role?

My role is to conduct listening sessions and formulate input so that everyone can feel they are part of the COP – regardless of whether or not they are in Belém. The most important thing in this moment is to view the COP not as an ordinary conference or just another edition, but as a necessary turning point in the context of climate. To begin planning implementation, which needs to be reflected not only in negotiations, but also in the daily lives of the population in their respective lands. In practice, the task is to ensure that the global effort against climate change has broad participation on the part of the diverse youth who come from river communities, from quilombola, indigenous, extractive and peripheral communities, like mine.

As a black woman from the periphery, what challenges and possibilities come with occupying a space like that of a Climate Conference?

As a young black woman, I have an important task, which is to connect the vast space for discussion about climate to the activities that the Black Movement is already leading, such as the Black Women’s March, to name one. That means talking about the various challenges these youth are facing and the need for the world to listen to us. The Black Movement has been making demands for several years, but they have yet to pierce the bubble.
 
I also bring cultural perspective, by which I mean how culture can be our ally, a strategy for awareness through festivals, films, and spaces that the youth frequent. It is essential to understand that much of our ancestral knowledge must not only be taken into account, but also listened to, because we need to reinvent the world. It is much easier to think about the end of the world than about reinventing it. And if a place does exist where the world is being reinvented, that place is where the youth are—black youth, in the periphery, in quilombola communities—where they are dealing with wars, with a six-day work week, and the lack of quality housing. Those youth are reinventing the world every day. They are the ones who need to be considered.  

What, in your view, are the possibilities that culture can offer to stimulate climate advocacy among young people?

Culture provides a means of dialogue, reflecting our daily issues through words. It is a way of speaking through images, words, poetry, in that – often –denunciation and perceptions come through art, books or music. Culture also has the capacity to reinvent, to transform, but when we are talking about culture, we are not only talking about leisure, art, or entertainment; we are also talking about our way of thinking. We need to change our culture into one that thinks about nature as a being with rights that need to be respected.

How do you see cultural institutions in that context? What role can they play from the perspective of “culture-based solutions”?

One role that institutions have is to mainstream climate policy with cultural policy, not only as public bodies, like Ministries or Secretariats, but also in their conferring of awards for job placement. These are instruments for accessing financing, for instance. How do we strengthen land activism - which is addressing climate issues - through culture? Partnerships with brands, companies and institutions can be used to leverage climate activism, to collaborate with the global effort against climate change, but I think that the role of institutions is to listen to our demands, not to articulate their own demands as organizations. What does the land need, for example? That is what must take priority, receive investment, accelerate its capillarity. We need to access more resources and have more visibility.

And what are the cultural practices in the peripheries that you believe are already forms of resistance and climate adaptation?

Recycling cooperatives are one very important peripheral example of climate adaptation, a task that is largely invisible. There are many projects focused on environmental education for children, teenagers and families, projects that have an enormous impact. Think about community organizations, soup kitchens, and green roofs. Sometimes it's just a vegetable garden, but the impact and awareness it generates is very important. And other means of occupying urban space, squares and parks. I think, in that sense, what comes from the periphery is very relevant because it is practical, effective, and it makes a real impact in people’s daily lives.

What gives you hope today in the fight against the climate crisis?

My hope lies in the idea that, to be a champion, you have to have a team. My responsibility is to lead a process that allows many voices from across Brazil, Latin America and the Global South to be heard. And also, to contribute to the fight against disinformation. What gives me hope is seeing that although there remains a lot to do, a lot has already been done. There are many paths ahead, there is a lot of technology, and a lot of creativity involved. We need to better coordinate our efforts. No need to start from scratch, but “from now on, we are going to prioritize a different agenda”: one that includes accessibility, inclusion and diversity. The challenge of continuing to reinvent the world is what gives me hope.

What is the future you dream of for your generation, for the youth in the periphery, in relation to climate and culture?

I would like it to be possible for more young people to be able to connect with the environment, with its biomes, nature, food, really with anything that is not artificial. I would like that to become a reality for the youth, to be part of our lives, and not just a privilege, but a guaranteed right. I think the struggle is in that, because it isn’t right to only have a park in Realengo; we need to have parks everywhere! It isn’t right to only have a vegetable garden here or there; we need to have several vegetable gardens! It isn’t right for some to have access and others not to. The environmental climate agenda is a collective agenda.