Climate Memory, Youth Activism, and Cultural Resilience: A Comparative Socio-Cultural Study of Coastal Communities in Australia and Norway

Abstract

This article examines how coastal youth communities reinterpret climate change through collective memory, cultural identity, and digitally mediated activism. Comparing coastal communities in Australia and Norway, the study analyzes how environmental disruption reshapes youth participation, place attachment, and social resilience within distinct institutional and cultural contexts. The article argues that climate activism is not only a political response to ecological risk but also a cultural process through which young people reconstruct belonging, intergenerational responsibility, and community futures.

Using comparative cultural analysis, digital ethnography, policy analysis, and secondary environmental datasets, the study compares two analytical dimensions: climate memory and youth environmental mobilization. The findings indicate that Australian coastal youth activism is strongly shaped by bushfire memory, reef degradation, Indigenous ecological knowledge, and climate justice discourse, whereas Norwegian coastal youth activism is mediated through Arctic change, maritime identity, state environmental governance, and tensions around petroleum dependence. Across both cases, digital communication platforms transform local ecological experience into transnational climate narratives.

The study contributes to social transformation scholarship by conceptualizing climate memory as a mediator between environmental crisis and cultural resilience. It concludes that sustainable climate policy must integrate youth participation, local ecological knowledge, cultural heritage, and intergenerational justice.