Finnegan Brown is using art and political action to protect our climate. This 16-year-old high school student from Sooke, B.C., received a 2023 I-SEA Youth Climate Activism Award for an essay featuring his nature sketches, urban design ideas and his presentation of a private member’s bill at the 2023-24 B.C.

Emma Chu and her friend Anna Kovtunenko created Vancouver’s ORCA (Ocean conservation, Reform, Climate optimism, Action) Festival. The teenagers conceived, planned and hosted this event for two years, bringing sustainable small businesses together with environmental groups to strengthen relationships while educating the public about ocean conservation.

Kiana Bonnick is building climate-resilient communities locally and internationally. This 28-year-old uses her spare time, as operations director of Womxn Of Colour Durham Collective (WOCDC), to provide culturally sensitive opportunities for fun in local natural spaces, while creating community and building resilience.

Emily Huddart Kennedy’s research shows everyone cares about the environment. The University of British Columbia professor’s recent book Eco-Types helps us understand five ways of relating to the natural world and invites us to approach each other from a place of compassion and respect.

Serena Chin wants a forest in every city. This 16-year-old in Grade 12 led the environmental team at Richmond Secondary School to plant the first Miyawaki pocket forest in Western Canada.

Tori Waugh helps farmers share their wisdom on soil health. As executive director of the Ontario Soil Network, she uses soil science, adult education principles, facilitation and conflict management skills to support farmers to move into leadership in their communities.

Yusra Shafi is a 22-year-old immigrant from Kuwait. With KAIROS Canada, she is supporting women in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Israel/Palestine, and South Sudan.

Anna Bigland-Pritchard uses opera to raise awareness of queer and environmental issues. As co-founder of Gay4Nature, she and her colleagues invite audiences to explore classical music through a queer and ecological lens.

After this 21-year-old Simon Fraser University student brought his community together to remove invasive species from a part of the Cariboo Heights forest in Burnaby, B.C., and rewild it, the City of Burnaby protected a larger portion of land previously slated for development.

Anna Erickson has been organizing real action on climate change since she was eight years old. Now 18, this Victoria, B.C., green, civil engineering student won a Youth Climate Activism Award from the Institute for Sustainability Education and Action (I-SEA) for getting her Grade 3 class to collaborate with her and a friend in writing, illustrating and publishing a book for other elementary school students.

Amalia Schelhorn taught Victoria, B.C., to dance to protect old-growth. This one-time National Ballet of Canada soloist helped bring media attention to the call to end old-growth logging in British Columbia by choreographing and organizing community dance protests.

Usman Khan wants spongier cities. This associate professor at the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University works with communities to design and build urban landscapes to make them more resilient to flooding, cooler in summer and healthier for our minds and bodies.

David Ives sees beauty in the broken. He hopes his art will help us see the beauty and promise of reclaimed materials. This Vancouver-based mixed media artist and designer is passionate about redefining “waste” as things simply waiting to be repurposed.

“I was curious about the cars. In 2023, I researched how they got there and how to get them sustainably removed as my Grade 12 capstone project. Fixing it seemed relatively simple but no one was doing it. One day, I just decided if not me, then who?”

Seventeen-year-old Ziya Merchant is the founder of Phasing Out Plastic Bottles, a multi-school campaign using plastic water bottles to raise awareness about climate justice.

Caio Krause Conradt is just 17, but he has already begun to empower the next generation.

This new Canadian from São Paulo, Brazil, is a 2023 Youth Climate Activism Award recipient, hosted by I-SEA, for his work engaging students in high schools and at the elementary level.

This 17-year-old Grade 12 student from Victoria, B.C., is a recipient of a 2022 Youth Climate Activism Award for her work raising awareness about the importance of recycling at her high school, reclaiming habitat from invasive species and encouraging native plant gardening, and lobbying all three levels of government on youth concerns about climate change.

Lisa Akinyi May translates research into action.

As the new associate director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ B.C. office, this 34-year-old leads the organization’s communications and public engagement and is a member of the management team.

Jacqueline L. Scott is bringing the great Canadian outdoors to Black people.

Her University of Toronto PhD thesis explores barriers Blacks experience to being in nature and her public work focuses on removing them.

Arian Tomar, a 19-year-old Indigenous Hmong-Indian American documentary filmmaker, mentors and supports youth climate leaders.