Young changemakers unite at the UN to forge a sustainable future

By Alexa Charouhis, We Are Forces of Nature

This past week I was invited to attend the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum, a gathering of young people from across the globe determined to take action for the planet.

ECOSOC President Bob Rae opened the forum with a call to action, telling the gathering that the world needs us “to start taking charge today.” But my peers and I need no urging. Growing up under threats of uncontrolled generative AI, global war, mass shootings and climate collapse, we know our future is in trouble, and we came to do something about it.

Invited to present my solutions for a sustainable world at the panel “Youth for Sustainable Oceans — Mobilization and Actions,” I listened as fellow young people highlighted the urgent threats facing our oceans: overfishing, coral bleaching, ocean acidification and sea level rise. A youth from Jakarta shared that just last month catastrophic flooding displaced thousands in Indonesia. Another youth with family displaced in Samut Prakan told of deadly monsoons leaving vast swathes of Thailand and Malaysia under water.

Their stories reflected the peril facing my hometown of Miami, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects sea levels could rise 2 feet by 2060 — enough to submerge parts of my city, including the neighborhood I grew up in. Refusing to accept that future, I shared two initiatives I’m working on in Miami — Fashions Forward and One Million Mangroves — as models for advancing U.N. Sustainable Development Goals on achieving gender equality (SDG 5) and protecting life below water (SDG 14). 

But safely ensconced within the walls of U.N. Headquarters, as we exchanged our fears and solutions through interpreters in seven languages, I struggled to hold on to my trademark optimism. There is hope — in the stories of my fellow youths rising to meet adversity every single day — but there is also a growing sense of urgency: We are out of time.

Because beyond these walls, just last week, catastrophic floods battered Italy, deadly snow storms left thousands powerless and freezing across Switzerland, and 27 million southern Africans are facing famine after an unrelenting drought wiped out last year’s harvest. 

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Young people know this; it’s our lived reality. What sets the ECOSOC Youth Forum apart is this: Unlike so many conferences where adults defer responsibility through endless debates over costs and blame — while youths serve as sidelined advocates — this forum is different.

We didn’t debate whose fault it was, how we got here or who owes what to whom. Instead, we came with a singular purpose: to exchange concrete solutions that are already changing lives around the world and to scale those solutions by taking them back to our communities and putting them into play.

Exiting the U.N. alongside other young people as the final session comes to a close, there’s a shift among us. We’re done with endless advocacy, or even asking for a seat at the table.

Armed with the support of our peers whose homes may be thousands of miles apart, but whose ideals are aligned, we’re ready to shoulder the responsibility of building a sustainable world. Because the future isn’t something we’re willing to inherit as it comes at us — it’s something we are determined to help shape. So forgive us if we no longer ask for permission to lead, but our planet is running out of time. And so are we. 

Alexa Charouhis is a 15-year-old environmentalist from Miami and the president of We Are Forces of Nature, a youth-led organization working to halt climate change. She leads the Fashions Forward Initiative, reintroducing vintage clothing into the circular economy, with all proceeds supporting girls secondary education in countries least responsible for carbon emissions but most impacted by climate change.

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