Understanding Youth’s Action in Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change: A Case Study of Kamrup, Assam, India

Abstract

Climate change is a global phenomenon that calls for collective action. In the present decade, the youth has demonstrated their concern over the growing climate issue as they are the future and they will have to feel the burn of today’s climate dismissive actions. Adaptation and mitigation are the climate responses through which we can deal with the changing climate attributes. Mitigation means acting towards reducing the source of emissions, hence targeting the source. While adaptation means adjusting our ways of living in accordance to the changing climate attributes. The study is an attempt to understand the factors that are responsible for youth’s decision regarding adaptation and mitigation to climate change. For this purpose, a sample of age group 19 -29 college-going undergraduate students was considered. Binary logistic regression result reveals that the model is statistically significant at 5% level of significance. Among the independent variables, the climate awareness is highly significant at 0.1 % level of significance. The study reveals that the more climate aware the youth is, the more likely he/she is to adopt mitigation and adaptation strategies to climate change. The climate aware youth are more likely to adopt adaptation mitigation strategies. There is no denying fact that the youth or the younger generation is a crucial voice in climate related issues and sustainable development. The study recommends that the government to adopt climate policies that are bottom-up instead of top-down approach in order to make the younger generation more aware and therefore incorporate them in bringing solutions to the climate-related issues.