(Un)Surprising Disconnect? Young People’s Perceptions of Climate Change, Disasters and Climate Action, Living in Australia’s Disaster-Affected Regional and Rural Communities in Victoria.

In regional and rural communities in Australia, young people already experience escalating disasters and the compounding impact of the climate crisis in their communities. While the consequences of the Anthropocene era are widely debated, for young people living and working outside of urban centres there is little intersection between this scholarship and the disproportionate impact of disaster(s). Furthermore, young people with lived experience of disaster residing outside of urban centres, appear to be largely absent from the broader national and global climate action conversation.

The aim of this paper is to introduce the perceptions of regional and rural young people into this conversation and examine the effects of climate disasters, the climate change mitigation policies of governments and the related uncertainty of the Anthropocene, in their lives. This paper draws on data from focus groups conducted with young people (17-22 years old) with lived-experience of climate-related disasters (including bushfires, floods and landslides) in regional and rural communities in the state of Victoria, Australia over the past five years.

The paper focuses on young people’s concerns regarding speaking up about climate change in their communities and the difficulties taking part in every-day political activities and larger climate protest actions. It highlights the complexity of the manner in which climate-related disasters and the climate change mitigation policies of governments shape young people’s understanding of, and response to, the climate crisis. The research further revealed concerns that their climate change action was constrained by their own or family members’ income generation from resource-extractive industries in their local contexts. This paper brings together scholarship from three significant fields of knowledge (disasters, climate change/the Anthropocene and youth studies) to enable opportunities for consciousness-raising and to consider alternative ways to foster young people’s every-day political climate action in regional and rural communities.