PRESS RELEASE

MAGIS

Teenagers care about the environment

Among the young students of Jesuit schools in Europe, ecological awareness is growing, they want to do their part to improve the places where they live, but they are worried about the future.

Ambrogio Bongiovanni, president of the Magis Foundation, says: "It is necessary to carry out a constant educational action towards the new generations to make them increasingly become agents of change both in lifestyles and in development and production models, as they represent the future”.

Environmental protection is a matter of primary importance for the protection of the planet. Climate change is the most significant threat, along with air pollution and the increase in waste production. This, in short, is what emerged from a questionnaire on the climate crisis launched by the Magis Foundation (Missionary Work of the Jesuit Euro-Mediterranean Province) and the Xavier Network (composed of Jesuit organisations involved in international cooperation for development) among the students of European Jesuit colleges. The countries involved were: Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Austria, Malta, Albania. The survey was launched on 1 April this year and ended on 31 May. The initiative was promoted in view of the Youth For Climate meeting taking place in Milan from 28 to 30 September. The aim of the questionnaire was to collect the opinions of an age group - between 14 and 18 years old - that is not normally included in this kind of survey. Around 2,000 replies were received.

Among the teenagers surveyed, on the one hand a strong ecological awareness is maturing and on the other hand they do not hide their concerns about the future of the planet. They are making efforts to contribute to environmental protection, but are not yet clear on how to act; one in four said they had not yet taken any action to contribute to environmental protection.

"There is no doubt that the survey has highlighted the presence of great attention to the environment, but also the need to educate the younger generations to make them increasingly aware of the changes in lifestyles, as they represent our future," explains Ambrogio Bongiovanni, president of the Magis Foundation. "This is why the Magis Foundation has decided to launch phase two as soon as possible, which will focus on action and awareness-raising," Bongiovanni continues. In the second phase, the pupils of the Jesuit colleges will be trained to try to identify creative and innovative solutions to increase environmental awareness. The ideas will then be submitted to a panel of experts, who will select the best ones. These will then be realised with the support of companies, chosen from among the most environmentally conscious within the Italian and European contents.

In the wake of the Fridays For Future events launched by Swedish activist Greta Thumberg, pupils at Europe's Jesuit colleges consider environmental protection to be a fundamental issue: 96% of those questioned consider it to be "very important or important". Among the threats to the environment, responses to the questionnaire ranked climate change as the most important (38% of respondents), followed by air pollution (25%) and increased waste production (19%). In addition, 51% of respondents believe that the air quality in the place where they live has deteriorated.

The solutions proposed by the boys and girls to reduce pollutant emissions focus on the need for action in the industrial sector (64%); in transport (47%) and in electricity production (28%). In this case, students could choose two response options.

On the question of who should take action to protect the environment, the young people surveyed believe that the answer should be global because the problem is global (42%); then, they recommend action by states to reduce emissions (25%). Interestingly, 24% of respondents believe that the main driver for change is action by individual citizens. In fact, when asked if individuals can play a role in protecting the environment in the places where they live, 90% of students were convinced.

According to the students, actions that citizens can take individually to improve the environment include reducing energy consumption (72%), using public transport (58%) and changing eating habits by reducing meat consumption (25%).

For their part, 59% of the young people surveyed are committed to good refuse separation, 28% have boycotted single-use plastics and 27% are working to reduce energy consumption. Again, there were two options in the answer.