‘I don’t just watch climate change happening’: the young Swedes being paid to make a difference
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- Sweden has a youth unemployment rate of approximately 24% among 15- to 24-year-olds, compared with an EU average of about 15%, and the UK has also reached roughly 16%, its highest level in more than a decade
- Upplandsbygd, a non-profit north of Stockholm funded by the five municipalities it covers and the EU, launched the Young Planetary Stewards (YPS) initiative and hired 10 young people to design and run their own sustainability projects
- YPS participants receive up to 40,000 Swedish krona (£4,000) per person alongside project-management mentoring and are matched with local organizations such as farms and conservation groups
- Oona Verveld and Clara Vikberg, both 18, partnered with Eda Lägergård — a historic Swedish summer camp — to replace the site's old information signs along walking trails with digital QR-code signs covering local biodiversity and the camp's history
- Other YPS-funded projects include clearing invasive species to restore biodiversity, building a frog pond habitat, conducting an oak tree inventory, constructing bird boxes and insect hotels, creating a new hiking trail, and running climate-conversation workshops in local libraries
- The program uses the EU's "leader method," a bottom-up approach for funding local rural development, and Upplandsbygd project manager My Sellberg said many young participants found their collaborations with local organizations particularly valuable
Why it matters: With Sweden's 24% youth unemployment nearly double the EU average, the YPS program reframes grassroots climate work as paid labor for teens who would otherwise compete for entry-level retail jobs. The £4,000-per-person grants, routed through the EU's leader-method rural development pipeline, turn what looks like a feel-good environmental scheme into a concrete youth-employment experiment that Upplandsbygd says it hopes to expand.
