Empowering voices for climate action through amateur football – Case studies from three countries

There are global concerns that the climate debate and subsequent social action are excluding voices. People living in areas of social deprivation are increasing recognised as those who will be most negatively impacted by climate forcing. This could be seen as a democratic deficit in communities which will feel the impacts of extreme weather more acutely than their wealthier counterparts due to issues of weaker infrastructure, knowledge and resilience. Relationships between excluded communities and innovations in climate action and carbon emissions reduction are largely unexplored, with activism and behaviour change undertaken by more affluent and well-educated individuals. To understand this, preliminary research has been undertaken through a pilot study with amateur football clubs in three countries who are representative of communities sitting outside the mainstream climate debate using analysis existing data on social indices for their regions and grey literature regarding their operations and activities. This chapter highlights work with groups of young people living with differing social challenges in UK, Central Europe and Africa, who are connected to their communities through amateur football teams. The findings indicate that despite challenging circumstances, there is a strong will to take climate action in such communities and the blueprint of a framework for further future study to investigate whether engaging voices from the margins in the climate change debate may also serve as an entry point to mainstream politics, to empower youth voices which historically demonstrate high levels of apathy or lack of knowledge to engage in the issues most likely to affect them.