Scouts make a Promise to the Planet ahead of COP26

Millions of Scouts will make a Promise to the Planet over the coming months as part of a global campaign to inspire young people to take action for the environment. #PromiseToThePlanet will encourage young people to carry out hundreds of thousands of individual community service actions around the world. The impacts of the campaign will then be presented at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) taking place in the United Kingdom this November. 

The Promise to the Planet campaign, co-created by young people and volunteers from 20 countries who worked with the World Organization of the Scout Movement, The Scout Association in the UK, WWF and Together for Our Planet, is part of a wider mobilisation effort which has already seen Scouts contribute more than 2 billion hours of community service towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Environmental education has been a central aspect of the Scouting’s programme for more than a century, and through #PromiseToThePlanet and initiatives such as World Scouting’s new Earth Tribe, young people can develop the skills and competencies necessary to become environmental leaders. 

“Promise to the Planet is an incredible, youth-led, global campaign against climate change. It’s our moment to say enough is enough. We’re uniting 54 million Scouts around the world to take action and use their voice in the fight for our planet’s future,” said Bear Grylls, Chief Ambassador of World Scouting, who will join together with a team of Scouts at COP26 to share the results of the campaign’s impact, and highlight how young people are making environmental change happen in communities around the globe.

COP26 will bring together negotiators from across the world to work together to ratify agreements on carbon emissions and seek a unified global response to the climate crisis. By leading a range of community-based projects around reducing consumption habits, recycling waste, recovering nature and rethinking our relationship with the environment, #PromiseToThePlanet will engage young people in a large-scale climate response while putting pressure on decision makers to take action - demonstrating just how important climate action is to today’s generation of young people.

A group of Scouts will join Bear Grylls and world leaders at COP26 in November to advocate for more ambitious policies to build a climate-resilient society, including actions to ensure global warming does not rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius, and just policies that mandate the largest contributors to climate change to take the most action.

Join us in making a Promise to the Planet and encourage young people to take action for the environment by logging their individual and community service projects on the Scouts for SDGs hub.