Social Innovation by Young People for Climate Change Solutions which Address Drivers of Migration and Displacement in the Global South

We live in a time of multiple and overlapping crises that yield political, environmental and economic impacts; these include the COVID-19 pandemic, forced migration triggered by political and security forces, climate change crises, earthquakes, explosions and wildfires that devastate communities. As youth, eager to be a part of the change that the world needs, we take the need for action seriously. In discussing the nuances driving the need and enablement of meaningful change, this piece captures the voices of leaders, some of whom youth, who have founded their own social impact organisations. These interviews were sourced through the personal networks of the authors, who also conducted the interviews in June and July 2023 for the purposes of highlighting voices from the ground up on this international platform. We are grateful for the trust and participation, along with the shared experiences that fuel each founder’s unique motivations and visions of change in their respective areas of work. Interviewing Dr. Carpi, a social anthropologist, strengthened the theoretical rooting of this piece further – as delineated below. 

Overall, it is clear to us that communities in low and middle-income countries face some of the most pronounced climate-related challenges. For example, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, 26.4 million internal displacements were reported in 2023 alone and the World Bank projects that by 2050, without any steps taken toward concrete climate action from now, climate change could push up to 216 million individuals across six world regions to move within their countries; further research suggests that close to 70% of this number is likely to emerge from the Global South. 

Statistics aside, ‘climate migration’ does not represent the full picture. Environmental and climate related factors are closely linked to socioeconomic, political, demographic, cultural and personal factors that lead to human mobility. As Dr. Carpi points out, ‘climate’ alone does not capture migration’s multidimensionality; this climate reductionism may instead obscure “underlying historical conditions”. Paul Matovu, founder of Vertical and Micro Gardening (VMG), speaks from his “uncountable experiences”  of environmental change. Take changes in weather, specifically rain patterns, for instance. Farmers who rely solely on agriculture to feed their families and make an income are no longer able to plant their crops without unprecedented rain and floods destroying newly planted seeds. This effect on crop cycles is experienced in countries across the African continent, in Uganda and Nigeria for example, and is a significant push factor of internal migration. However, urban settings have different effects on food security. Poverty, fluctuation of prices and supplies from rural farms are the main cause of food scarcity in cities. This implies that the shortage of food that affects farmers in rural areas also has a real impact on urban food prices, perpetuating a cycle of impoverishment. 

Social innovation has great potential to deal with such complex situations when it embodies a real understanding of contextual needs in regions prone to climate-driven displacement, notably the Global South. The heart of social innovation therefore lies in the development and implementation of necessary solutions. 

However, deconstructing assumptions of what social innovation entails is key. For example, the development of innovative solutions is often linked to the resilience of people or community, which in turn may support the building of their future resilience. While resilience is typically framed as the ability to withstand or recover from difficulty, this is a difficult task for someone who lives in a place impacted by many long-lasting, ongoing and inter-linked crises. In these contexts, it is worthwhile understanding that coupling ‘social innovation’ with ‘resilience’ is not always entirely resonant. As Mariam Haidar, Founder of Edutek, puts it, as a society inundated with crises built up over decades, Lebanon, for example,  is “tired of the word ‘resilience’”. Her hope is simple: for Lebanese to live in peace. To this end, she argues that the focus must move away from the tenacity of her population; instead, priority needs to be placed on locally relevant solutions. We draw from this to argue that global humanitarian-driven conversations on innovation and resilience must be grounded in how we are truly understanding needs and providing the appropriate aid to people accordingly. 

Furthermore, when conceptualising innovation, there is an overwhelming tendency to embrace disruptive technological intervention and position technological advancement as a one-solution pathway to build climate resilience in vulnerable communities. While technology has a role to play in innovating, rooting understandings of innovation within technology alone can be limiting. As Dr. Carpi explains, innovation simply insinuates the “need to desperately improve” a given situation and involves “developing better ways of doing so effectively”, irrespective of whether technology is deployed. 

A Look at Innovative Solutions in the Global South

1. We present three distinct examples of innovation that can address factors influencing climate change and mitigate its impact, while creating the potential to support communities already affected by climate migration. First, innovation by design, as seen in Ugandan social enterprise VMG’s efforts to transform the country’s agricultural sector through vertical farming in small urban spaces, including slums.

   With VMG, its founder and innovator, Paul, drew from his lived experience of recurring food instability, worsened by climate change and the detrimental impact it has had on the social fabric of Ugandan communities, to innovatively design his version of the vertical farm.13 In doing so, he offers an agricultural solution that optimises the use of small spaces in urban and refugee camp settings. By creating more space for plant growth than the farm occupies, his vertical farm provides opportunity for the economic self-sufficiency of underprivileged families when they sell surplus crops.
    

2. Second, innovation in reimagining employment as seen in Tripulley’s community-centred work to revitalise job-creation that centres social impact and financial independence in economically fractured Lebanon. 

   Tripulley’s Lamya Karkour points out that creating forms of employment or self-sufficiency is interwoven with promoting people’s dignity. By creating opportunities for one to provide for their families, individuals have the space to reclaim some agency that crises have stripped from them. The greatest innovation displayed by changemakers is thus their ability to marry several dimensions together and create a multiplier effect, where beneficiaries are supported at an intersection of needs.
    

3. Third, innovation in technology and education as seen in Edutek’s digital skill-building programmes that trains communities to translate learned technical skills into building technological solutions to resource challenges within their own communities. Context-based understandings are critical to account for in social innovation.

   In Lebanon, Edutek’s programme equipped students interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to design a mobile application, which leveraged artificial intelligence to scan and sort waste in refugee camps. What was set out as a technological solution for waste, thus included an economic driver, as refugees were able to also sell the scanned in-camp plastic waste on the market. 

In the above illustrations, each solution is engineered to address multiple issues that comprise social, financial and environmental objectives. This is the ‘blended value’ of social entrepreneurship, as it “circumvents the common binary and reductive perception that the overarching objective of an enterprise must be either financial or social”. 

In these examples, the economic empowerment of vulnerable communities proved essential. As Rosalie Tieges, co-founder of the Thai Child Development Foundation puts it, “economic drivers will be the driver of the masses.”

Fostering Youth-Driven Social Innovation Across Systems and Policies

As part of this work, the greatest concern of social innovators we spoke to was that policy processes do not include the ideas of changemakers from the grassroots level. Across conversations, they expressed their wishes for how governments and social innovators can collaborate. Firstly, they suggested that it should be recognised that the roles played by governmental institutions and ground-up impact are distinct, with the former setting policies and the latter implementing innovative solutions. Secondly, within a broader ecosystem, they recommended that there needs to be space for social innovators to advocate for change; for example, promoting specific regulations related to climate change and engaging migrant populations in different ways. Collectively, this can work to address both the drivers of climate migration as well as communities already affected by past and ongoing displacement. 

Research has shown that youth are at the centre of furthering this change ground-up. The United Nations World Youth Report finds that across regions in the Global South, youth form a larger proportion of social entrepreneurs, compared to commercial entrepreneurs. The UNDP’s Climate Concern to Climate Action finds that although 85% of young social entrepreneurs face challenges in their efforts to advance climate action, they remain committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To actualise the potential of this dedication, a balance must be struck in the supportive ecosystems that exist in each context. The call to action here is not to insist upon a trend of social entrepreneurship as the answer, but to effectively equip individuals to grow and sustain impact-driven entities. We suggest that this could be achieved through more intentionally designed incubators, led by experienced social innovators in each context across the Global South. Additionally, as the Miller Centre for Social Entrepreneurship points out, funding mechanisms can better propel the needs and trajectories of social innovators who are refugees. As the OECD identifies, entrepreneurship offers refugees a powerful opportunity to contribute to the economy and society they have fled to; furthermore, the UNHCR found that refugee-led enterprises are more economically viable than funders assume. However, with significant gaps in education, particularly for refugee communities, there is a great risk of losing an entire generation of individuals with lived experience of concurrent crises and understanding to catalyse key levers of change for impact. 

Based on extensive research and in-depth conversations with changemakers across the Global South, we believe that the global community stands at a future-defining intersection with opposing realities: where youth thrive as they shape a more sustainable future for all or continue to be let down by the challenges of today. According to UNESCO, promoting youth social inclusion entails promoting equal opportunities for youth to unleash their full potential in various areas of life, such as civic, educational, political, economic and environmental. We urge international and national communities to enhance their support for sustainable youth-led and  place-based innovations, especially in the Global South, for reasons outlined in this blog piece.
 

About the authors:

Jeyda Simren is an Associate at The Majurity Trust, a Singapore-based philanthropic organisation where she oversees funds focused on education and youth mental health. This experience follows 2.5 years as a Research Assistant in the Social Inclusion Project at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy where she co-authored "Seeking Shelter: Homeless during the COVID-19 Pandemic". Her systems analysis of refugee education in Lebanon was also recently published in the St. Catherine’s Academic Review. Simren completed her Masters in Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford, where she was a Leading for Impact Fellow, after receiving her Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She also volunteers extensively; her pro-bono work supporting the fundraising and international collaborations of Vertical and Micro Gardening, a Ugandan social enterprise, is of particular significance given their ongoing work in refugee settlements.

Megha Saha currently works on the Policy team at Meta, where her role is centered around crafting effective content policies in an effort to mitigate key integrity risks as well as to protect consumer safety and voice on Meta's platforms. She joined the company shortly after completing her Bachelor of Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore in Political Science, where she took a particular interest in studying the politics of present-day refugee crises and climate-induced displacement in and across South Asia, including Bangladesh and Pakistan. In the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she also volunteered as a translator for Bangladeshi foreign workers to support their communication with healthcare workers in Singapore. Most recently, Megha obtained a PADI diving certificate to better experience and understand the impact of human activity on oceanic systems, and looks forward to engaging with coral reef restoration projects in Southeast Asia in the near future.

This article is part of the IOM Blog Series: Youth Voices on Migration, Environment and Climate Change

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