Young People as a Boundary Object for Non-Consensus Community Organizing Toward Transformative Climate Justice

Abstract

Considering the widening social and political divide and the heterogeneous entities needed to effect systems change, a non-consensus approach to climate action is needed to connect and leverage the efforts of disparate groups. This article explores how young people might be a boundary object, or bridge, for community organizing and synergetic work to thwart the climate crisis. Young people embody and, at times, act on behalf of future generations, and they represent a democratic impulse to challenge authoritarian and concentrated power structures that cause and perpetuate climate change. As the term boundary object is often applied improperly to any object used in a collaborative space, the idea that young people might be a boundary object for community organizing and systemic reform to address climate change is held up to the concept’s key criteria: interpretive flexibility, distinct material and organizational structure, and multiple scales and granularities. The idea is then further developed using an example of the youth-led lawsuit Juliana v. United States, which sought to compel the government to preserve a livable climate and established significant legal precedent for national climate action despite the Supreme Court denying a petition to review the case in March 2025. A model is used to illustrate how differentiated groups understand and work toward and with the boundary object young people, and to identify opportunities for community organizing and synergetic work toward transformative climate justice, which draws upon diverse knowledge and worldviews and is inherently democratic and intergenerational.