There is perhaps no better way to combat climate change than by educating people about it and creating a generation of informed citizens who are more prepared to act and adapt in the face of climatic threats. Education has played an increasingly significant role in the negotiations and as a testament to its importance; December 4 was rightly chosen as the education day at COP 21.
“We need greener economies, greener legislation, greener policies and greener societies. Fundamentally, we need greener citizens,” said Irina Bokova, director general of Unesco.
“This is why education is so important to shape the new values and knowledge,” she said, highlighting the need to empower people to take the right decisions and tackle the challenges posed by climate change.
The global consensus for climate education
Bokova’s claims are backed by a study undertaken by the World Wide Views on Climate and Energy, Denmark, which involved 10,000 citizens in groups of 100 each in 97 debates around the world on the role of citizen participation in climate change efforts.
The study found that 78% of citizens around the world are very concerned about the impacts of climate change. Most importantly, education was picked as the key tool to tackling climate change by the majority of the citizens.
When asked who should be primarily responsible for tackling climate change, participants scored “citizens” and “civil society organisations” higher than national governments. This study illustrated that people want to be seen as actors playing a significant part in tackling climate change. They not only want to take part in implementing the solutions, but also in making choices about the solutions to implement.
The core message from this world wide study is clear – citizens are interested in the kind of climate change education that promotes participation and decision making.
“It has taken a lot of time to recognise the importance of education in the climate agenda,” said president of COP20, Manuel Pulgar Vidal. “We cannot move towards transformative change if it is not through education and public awareness.”
Vidal stressed the need to recognise the importance of the science and the information it has brought to our doorsteps. “We need to transmit that knowledge through more clear messages – about the consequences of climate change and what we can do as individual citizens,” he said.
Mainstreaming climate change education
In order to put such rhetoric into practice, strong, coordinated action is needed from government ministries to transform education at the national level and make change an integral part of it. And transformative work is being done in this sphere by different countries. For instance, 2,000 schools in Costa Rica have taken environment protection actions since 2004. Morocco has placed the development of greener schools at the heart of its policies. Brazil has piloted a teachers’ training course on climate change and is exploring how to scale it up in municipal state and national level. And the Dominican Republic has included climate change and education in the national development strategy.
“We are attaining inter-ministerial collaboration by working with ministry of environment, minister of water and environment and ministry of energy, agriculture, ICT in a cross-cutting manner,” said Flavia M Nabugere, minister of state and environment, Republic of Uganda.
Education ministry officials from different countries also highlighted the need to build newer and stronger partnerships with the private sector for innovating in education. “We have to pass the message that investing in green economies is a smart investment and that it is matched by good business as well as moral and ethical imperatives,” said Eliana Julia Rojas Torres from Peru’s Ministry of Education.
Education to foster youth climate action
A core theme throughout education day was the importance of educating youth and their potential to contribute to climate change action. “The education needs to adapt and be flexible and the focus needs to be on young people,” said Lesley Jones, Vice President of Foundation for Environmental Education.
Xuhtezcatl Martinez, youth director, Earth Guardians, said it is important to educate youth in a way that inspires them to engage. “A lot of theoretical knowledge on the impacts of climate change is shoved at young people but they need to be given the opportunity to act and be part of the solution,” he said. “The approach needs to make them alive. They need to feel that they are a part of the movement.”
Echoing Martinez, Kartikeya V Sarabhai, director of the Centre for Environment, said a sense of empowerment is very important for people, as well as innovation in education. “A lot of the education dissemination methods today are out-dated,” he said, “An approach of student-to-student learning needs to be promoted as well as the traditional teacher-to-student methods.”
The way forward
In the face of exacerbating impacts of climate change, actions by the government or development organizations alone will no longer suffice. Efforts to combat climate change are required at the individual level, and an informed citizenry is the first and foremost requirement for doing so.
Climate change is the reality today, and the prudent course of action is to educate people and enable them to adapt and learn to live with it.
