This workshop presentation explores how environmental rights function as sites of civic and legal learning for youth engaged in climate activism. Drawing on 33 in-depth interviews with youth climate activists in Norway, the study examines how Norway's Environmental Provision in its National Constitution (EPICs) shapes youth activist environmental understanding, civic identity, and engagement with the law. Findings show that participation in environmental movement organizations plays a central educational role in developing legal awareness and connecting environmental issues to questions of rights, responsibility, and state accountability. In contrast, formal schooling often provides fragmented and depoliticized climate education that rarely links environmental content to power, justice or legal frameworks. Youth activists describe EPICs as both pedagogical and political resources—symbolically empowering while also revealing institutional paradoxes. The analysis highlights how learning about environmental rights occurs across formal and informal settings, positioning youth activism and legal mobilization as important, though often overlooked, spaces of civic education.
The session invites attendees to reflect on how environmental education can more meaningfully engage with rights, law, and youth participation in the context of climate change.