Kih’Nyiah McKay may be just 11 years old, but she is keenly aware of the climate crisis.

She knows the loss of trees reduces oxygen and that dumped garbage kills the sea turtles that keep the ocean around her healthy.

“Young people need to save the Earth,” she says with a solemnity that belies her age.

It is only March, but the sun outside is already blisteringly hot, posing a challenge for the electric fans battling valiantly to keep Kih’Nyiah’s classroom cool.

In Antigua, like the rest of the Caribbean, the impacts of climate change are a daily reality, evidenced in receding beaches, worsening hurricanes, debilitating droughts and increasingly suffocating summers.

Some islanders, however, are fighting back.

Kih’Nyiah is one of more than 60 girls and young women who have been trained as coastal stewards, tasked with planting indigenous trees to slow coastal erosion, protecting the nesting sites of critically endangered turtles, and making and managing beach bins.

Read Original Article