Start Where You Are: Youth Climate Leader Marcele Oliveira

To mark Earth Day 2026, we spoke with Marcele Oliveira, a youth climate leader from Brazil whose work centers on climate education, community organizing, and amplifying Global South voices in international spaces.

Marcele Oliveira is a youth climate leader and cultural producer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She served inside the COP Presidency and works at the intersection of community organizing, climate justice, and Global South advocacy.

Interview facilitated by EARTHDAY.ORG South America with special thanks to Rodolfo Ropo Beltran, Regional Director, EARTHDAY.ORG South America.

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself. What first shaped your path into climate leadership?

My climate activism started in Realengo — a neighborhood in the western zone of RIo de Janeiro, a peripheral community. There, we fought for a green park, and that really changed my life. It’s now changing the lives of my family, my brothers, my nephews. I really believe public spaces and a relationship with nature can send a strong message about the life we want to live.

When we talk about nature, community, and trees, we are not talking about something separate from us. I realized that when I understood the importance of that green park in my community. And now we are seeing many different young people working inside communities, defending their territories — because of the consequences of climate change, yes, but also because they have solutions and proposals to make things change. We say in Brazil it’s mutirão — collective effort. But every time I say that, it starts in Realengo. In my home.

Q: What did the fight for that park teach you about environmental justice?

When I understood the environmental racism in my community through that fight, it was also a moment to amplify the work we were already doing with cultural practices and arts communication. We moved the conversation around the park, and now it’s become public policy — my city doesn’t just have one green park but many, connected with a broader agenda.

Looking at that, and then looking at floods and heat waves, I understood: being a climate activist is not optional. It’s not just because we want to defend nature. It’s also because we want to defend people — especially the people we love, especially people living in marginalized communities.

Climate action is a proposition of life for everybody, because we know the impacts are different if you are in a big building versus an indigenous community. The injustice is inside the conversation, and climate justice is the invitation for action.

Q: This year’s Earth Day theme is “Out Power, Our Planet.” What does that mean to you in the context of youth leadership?

For me, it’s about mutual youth energy — the energy that says: you don’t need to do the same thing I did, you don’t need to be in the same spaces. But you do need to take care of your community and the trees around you.

In my city, marginalized communities, the peripheries, don’t have trees anymore because of globalization and urbanization. But the wealthier zones have trees, public spaces, museums, cinemas. Who is making those decisions about the cities we live in? It’s our power, our planet, our cities, our lives.

Last year, we launched a youth platform to connect youth movements and action agendas. In one month, 307 submissions came in from 46 countries. That’s a major milestone — proof of the connection between grassroots action and UN climate decision-making, and a reminder of how much effort we must keep investing in that connection.

Q: What needs to change to better equip young people to take part in climate decision-making?

Three things: access, funding, and connected strategy.

Funding is essential — it’s impossible to do good work without the necessary support. And I say this from experience. I participated in a youth climate negotiations program in my city that was free. I’m not an international relations scholar; I’m a cultural producer. Without free capacity building, what we’re doing would be impossible.

We also need young people to not just be in the room, but to be heard — because just following the steps is not enough in a context of emergency. We need to be creative. We need to do things differently. We need open spaces for more people in decision-making roles.

During COP, we ran a campaign with youth organizations calling for five percent of climate finance to go to youth. The youth are driving climate solutions but are not being compensated for that. That, too, is climate injustice.

Q: What progress are you seeing in climate education across South America?

Last year we had the luck to work with all the biomes in Brazil — the Amazon, the Cerrado, the Caatinga, the Pantanal, the Pampa, and the Atlantic Forest, which is mine. The conversation about climate changed in the common understanding of people, because not everyone follows COP discussions, but everyone knew the COP was held in Belém do Pará. That was a powerful moment for climate justice discourse, and it’s brought more people into the conversation.

At COP last year, for the first time, people of African descent were nominated in decision-making roles. The first time. That is a recognition of the existence of people like me.

Climate education also means understanding our relationship with nature, with decision-making spaces, and with the understanding that global decisions have local impacts. We need an education that builds capacity to advocate and lead — and that recognizes knowledge coming not just from data or academic contexts, but from people, from ancestors, and from ways of living with the Earth that were sustainable long before now. The IPCC itself has formally acknowledged the importance of traditional knowledge for adaptation and resilience. We need to center that.

Q: How does climate change show up in the daily lives of communities in Brazil and across the Global South?

Many times, heat waves in my country seemed like a normal thing — I’m from Rio de Janeiro, it’s always hot. But now it’s hot in a different way. Going to school starts to be a challenge. Classes get canceled because of the heat. We now have protocols in Rio for medium and high heat waves. I was recently in New York in April and it was 30 degrees Celsius. That is not right.

When temperature changes that drastically, it affects food, transportation, everything. And in the Global South, this doesn’t just represent a challenge in your day — it represents people dying. It represents people having to leave their homes and sometimes not coming back. UNICEF data tells us that one in three children and young people in the world live in areas where at least four climate and environmental shocks overlap. Not one — four or more.

In Brazil, 67 percent of people living in environmental risk areas are Black. I’m talking about my father, my mother, my friends. This is not just unfair. This is an interruption of our lives.

Q: Why is it essential that leadership from the Global South shapes broader climate solutions?

Because solutions need to come from those living the problem. The Global South is home to the world’s most vital ecosystems, the majority of global biodiversity, and communities whose traditional knowledge holds real answers — not just in beautiful speeches, but in daily routines, with children and communities.

If climate solutions are designed only in the Global North and only in global institutions, they won’t be enough. The real solutions won’t be included. Important data — disaggregated by gender, race, history — won’t be considered. You cannot solve a problem without listening to the people living it.

That’s why our work, at its core, is about listening. And starting from that listening to build hope on the table.

Q: You’ve spoken about mutirão as a model for climate action. What does that look like in practice?

Mutirão is a Tupi-Guaraní word from Brazil’s indigenous tradition. You can translate it as “collective effort,” but it’s mutirão because it’s about doing together. And you only make mutirão when something is wrong.

I’ve made mutirão many times — waking up with neighbors to clean a church, or communities coming together after a flood to build something new. A lot of people around the world are making mutirão right now, because something happened: a flood, a disaster.

When communities move together, everybody moves together. When women move, when children move, when people of African descent and indigenous communities move — we’re all in this conversation. We have too many decisions being made by a small group, while the solutions may be in a place that group isn’t listening to.

When we share responsibility — not compete, but share — and connect solutions at scale, we can move communities from Belém do Pará and Addis Ababa, from Greenland and the Amazon of Colombia, all at the same time. That collective force is mutirão in real life.

Q: What gives you hope right now in the climate movement?

My friends. My friends are always the reason I have hope. We work so much — many times without pay, as volunteers — because we believe in the importance of our voices inside decision-making spaces. And sometimes we’re exhausted. Many times I am exhausted. But we talk to each other and we support each other.

I was nominated by the President of my country, President Lula, to a climate leadership role. But first, I was nominated by my friends. That means everything.

And our role, when we do have visibility, is to use it to recommend and invite — not just me, but people from the Amazon, youth from Belém do Pará, people from the peripheries, people of African descent and indigenous communities. Every time I do that and see it happen — a friend in a space, sharing their experience and feeling that they are in the right place — that gives me hope. We are on the right path.

Q: What is one action people can take this Earth Day to step into their power?

Start where you are.

I was once so overwhelmed with studying and work that I didn’t notice the trees in my own periphery disappearing. When I noticed, that was the moment I connected the big global discussion on climate change to the local fight for a green park in Realengo.

Look at your own territory — your neighborhood, your friends, your school, your community. Understand what is necessary to organize there for a better life. Try to find your people, because sometimes we feel alone, but we’re not. Connect with the children you love. Follow the road to COP 31. Join your local Conference of Youth.

And don’t compare yourself to others. There is no single right way to do this — if there were, we wouldn’t be in a crisis. Your voice, your future, your history, your community: this is climate action. This is what matters.

The movement needs all of us. So start where you are. When you start, the pathways will appear.