by Mary Adams, AWC The Hague and Carol-Lyn McKelvey, FAUSA/AIWC Cologne
On April 13, 2023, the Center for Universal Education and the Global Partnership for Education co-hosted an event at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. to discuss the nexus between climate change and education.
The climate crisis is a children’s education crisis. Extreme weather events destroy or damage schools, learning materials, and vital infrastructure, making it difficult for children to keep learning. Multiple indirect effects on children’s education, including increased risks of malnutrition, disruption of livelihoods, and negative health impacts, inhibit children from attending school.1
During the event, participant Save the Children shared the results of a survey of 800 million children in developing countries regarding climate change and education. The surprising result described the overlap of climate crisis and equal access to education. This led researchers to the conclusion that the climate crisis directly affects children around the world and is the greatest threat to their survival, learning and protection.2
How does climate change impact education?
The Brookings Institution virtual event motivated the FAWCO Education Team to think differently about Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. We noted the complexity of commingled issues of education and climate change in three key areas:
- School structures
- Community access to schools
- Health-related issues that prevent access to schools
Manui Bhardway, founding advisor for Nurture Nature Global and event speaker, provided powerful data about the direct impact of climate change on school infrastructure in India. In 2008, flooding in Bihar fully destroyed or partially damaged 1,429 primary schools and 105 secondary schools.3 In May 2019, Odisha was hit by Cyclone Fani, resulting in damage to 5,735 primary and secondary schools.4
In Zimbabwe, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) documented how adverse weather has been attributed not only to destroying schools, but to destroying infrastructure to access schools, such as bridges and roads. For example, the 2016/17 agricultural season recorded heavy downpours throughout the country, destroying approximately eighteen percent of the country’s schools and affecting the education of approximately 500,000 children.5
To consider the short and long-term consequences in developing countries, UNDP research6 studied the impact of extreme weather conditions (such as heavy rains accompanied by flash floods, strong winds and hailstorms, and drought and increasing heat temperatures) on schools and communities. Consequences included health issues such as reduced availability of safe drinking water, compromised sanitation and increased incidences of weather-related ailments such as malaria and diarrheal diseases, which led to absenteeism and even withdrawal of children from schools with contaminated water supplies.7
In 2020, the United States experienced a record-breaking 22 natural disasters that each resulted in at least $1 billion in damages. These extreme events affected communities, school districts and institutions of higher education.8 Moreover, research showed that certain disadvantaged communities bear disproportionately high and adverse health, environmental and climate-related impacts.9
Does climate change and education impact girls?
In June 2022, the UN Climate Change News released a report that reminded people that while climate change affects everyone, it does not affect everyone equally.10 Verona Collantes, an intergovernmental specialist with UN Women, explained how climate change impacts human rights in an interview with Global Citizen:
Gender inequality hampers women’s capacity and potential to be actors of climate action. These gender inequalities — access to and control over resources, access to education and information, and equal rights and access to decision-making processes — define what women and men can do and cannot do in a particular context of climate change.11
In 2022, the UK Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office published a Position Paper stating that the majority of those displaced by climate change are female, which leads to increased risk of violence and exploitation.12 Most families use negative coping mechanisms to survive climate conditions, trapping girls in conditions of poverty, marginalization, vulnerability, withdrawal from education, child labor and early marriage. The report estimated that with each passing year, the education of more than 40 million children is disrupted by climate change and ecosystem degradation. In his remarks, Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP, Minister of State (Development and Africa), succinctly described the impact of education on sustainability:
We cannot achieve a sustainable future without education and sadly, without a sustainable future, there will be no education. Education can empower and build resilience, support adaptation, and help to mitigate the climate and environment crisis.13
Climate-smart education systems
A “marriage” between SDG4 and SDG13 will create a new agenda for teachers, communities and policymakers to address climate change as part of the overall education process. The Education Team would like to present four components of change:
- Government Frameworks
- Schools as Multi-Purpose Buildings
- Technology
- Children as Change Agents
Government Frameworks
Unfortunately, the reality is that the uncertainties associated with climate change and its mitigation – coupled with the fact that the costs of climate change mitigation policies need to be paid now, but the benefits will accrue in the future – make it difficult to enact appropriate policies. But climate-smart education systems are slowly gaining implementation ground.
Rebecca Winthrop (Brookings Institution) stated that the “marriage of SDG4 and SDG13” is reflected in the launch of the Climate-Smart Education System Framework14 by the Global Partnership for Education. This framework aims to accelerate access, learning outcomes and gender equality through equitable, inclusive and resilient education systems fit for the 21st century. It proposes a seven-dimension framework to leverage potential entry points and address gaps within national education systems to strengthen the resilience and relevance of education to climate change and environmental degradation. The seven dimensions include Data and Evidence, Policy and Planning, Coordination, Finance, Infrastructure, Teaching and Learning, Schools and Communities.
During COP28 (Nov 2023), the Hon. Ahmad Belhoud Al Falasi, Minister of Education in the United Arab Emirates, will announce the launch of Green Schools.15 The four pillars of Green Schools are the physical space of the school itself – how resilient is it now and in the future, learning curriculums, teacher capacity and school communities. Guiding these discussions are two questions: How prescriptive can we be? and How can teachers, students and communities be actively involved in sustainability based on geolocation issues?
The US Department of Education has developed a Climate Adaption Plan for state and local educational agencies, schools and higher education. The plan emphasizes the relationship between the climate and equity, particularly access to safe, healthy, sustainable and resilient 21st-century learning environments.16 In addition, the Climate Change Education Act endorses funding for literacy plans for formal and informal climate change education.17
Schools as Multi-Purpose Buildings
The Adaptation Fund was established to finance concrete adaptation projects and programs in developing countries that are parties to the Kyoto Protocol and are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.18 Mikko Ollokainen, event speaker and manager of the Adaptation Fund Board Secretariat, shared that although Adaption Fund administers about $1B for global projects, only about 10% include education. To illustrate his point, he described a Disaster Risk Reduction project in Haiti ($10M):
In January 2010, approximately 38,000 students and 1,300 teachers and education personnel died in Haiti. The Ministry of Education offices were destroyed along with 4,000 schools – close to 80% of educational establishments in the Port-au-Prince area. In 2016, hurricane Matthew struck Haiti and caused significant physical damage to Haiti’s education sector. On average, one school out of four was damaged. Many of these schools are still used as temporary shelters or as evacuation shelters.
The aim of this project is to enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of the Haitian education sector to disaster risk of natural hazards related to climate change, through the establishment of appropriate risk assessment tool, schools retrofitting and implementing adaptation actions in Haiti.
By retrofitting schools of the future to also serve as community shelters during earthquakes and hurricanes, the project expects to benefit about 1.5 million people living in the communes through the school project assessment and about 150,000 students.19
Technology
Most people think about technology as a school subject and not as a set of strategic construction tools to build schools. But what if technology were used to better understand weather conditions in order to build schools in environmentally safe places? In an article in DigitalFirst Magazine, Chiara Rinaldi, Co-Founder & COO, Sustainaccount AG wrote:
The use of digital technologies has become increasingly important in fostering climate change adaptation, helping businesses and communities understand and prepare for the risks of a changing climate. Climate modelling and simulation are one of the significant digital trends driving progress in this area. By using advanced computer algorithms, scientists can simulate the Earth’s climate and predict how it will change in the future, providing decision-makers with important information about the potential impacts of climate change.20
Artificial Intelligence can analyze massive weather data and make predictions about what weather event is going to happen and where that event is most likely to occur. For example, Sierra Leone is using AI models to predict flood-prone areas for school placement. In addition, they have updated their curriculum to include environmental science and civics, including textbooks and teacher training.21
Children as Change Agents
A ten-country survey22 conducted in 2021 noted that 75% of young people think the future is frightening and 60% are extremely worried about climate change. Can teaching children and youth about climate change and sustainability actually motivate climate action? Education can encourage children to change their attitudes and behavior; it also helps them to make informed decisions. Through its Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development Programme,23 UNESCO aims to “help people understand the impact of global warming today and increase ‘climate literacy' among young people.” This program and other innovative educational initiatives, including the Global Action Programme (GAP), Action for Climate Empowerment and the ZOOM campaign, were presented and discussed at COP 22 (2016).
In a report from World Vision,24 children interviewed in The Republic of Congo and Brazil made it clear that they do not want to be passive subjects of climate change problems. They want to be active creators and implementers of solutions. This perspective contrasts with traditional views of childhood, which portray children as passive recipients of aid or helpless victims. It is a shift to a portrayal of children that respects them as people with something to contribute in efforts to improve our world.
Education can empower and build climate resilience
The Education Team’s lessons learned from the Brookings Institution event helped us to understand the connectivity between the Sustainable Development Goals and the overall importance of education:
- Schools can play a critical role in increasing awareness of local communities on climate and disaster risk issues and promote local actions to build resilience.
- We must invest in green skills to meet emission regulations, adopt renewable and clean energy, manage waste and produce green and resilient products and services.25
- There is a need for interdisciplinary climate studies. Education needs to mesh with many other sectors to realize climate goals, but must always remain a priority.
FAWCO’s Resolutions and Recommendations for 2021–2023 establish our commitment to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide, especially in the areas of education, the environment, health and human rights. The Global Issues and UN Advocacy Teams serve as a resource for our members to raise awareness and opportunities to take action. The Sustainable Development Goals are a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future.26
The current Target Environment program, Our Natural Environment: Empowering Women and Girls to Ensure a Sustainable Future,27 illustrates the result of this powerful marriage in a new way. The Brookings Institution focused on school vulnerability to natural disasters. FAWCO’s Target Project, Awesome Blossoms, proposes that schools can be retrofitted for a new purpose to fight climate change and sustain education. With 1,500 urban farms built at three primary schools (500 farms per school) there is an expectation of 45-day crop yields of 75 tons of fresh vegetables. This means that the concept of multi-purpose schools now feeds students, commercial sales ensure education fees and women in the community become micro-entrepreneurs. Community outreach and after-school programs will raise awareness of the importance of sustainable farming and inspire communities to adopt eco-friendly practices that benefit both the environment and their communities. FAWCO can now cite impacts on environment/climate, gender equality, community support, and as well as measurable advancements in SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 17.
Streamlining and integrating our FAWCO Resolutions and Recommendations across all the Global Issues teams can not only enable the marriage of SDG4 and SDG13, but produce a sustainably balanced point of view within the scope of FAWCO’s international influence.
Endnotes:
1 Rethinking education for a climate-resilient future | Brookings
2. Climate Crisis | Save the Children International
3. Government of Bihar et al. 2010.
5. Climate Change and Education | Zimbabwe Human Development Report 2017
8. US Dept of Education Climate Adaptation Plan Sept 2021
9. Record number of billion-dollar disasters struck U.S. in 2020 | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
10. Dimensions and examples of the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change, the role of women as agents of change and opportunities for women | UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
11. Understanding Why Climate Change Impacts Women More Than Men | Global Citizen
12. Swaine, A. (2018). Conflict-Related Violence Against Women:Transforming transition. Cambridge University Press.
13. Addressing the climate, environment, and biodiversity crises in and through girls’ education | Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
14. Toward climate-smart education systems: A 7-dimension framework for action | GPE
15. Emirates Coalition for Green Schools | EmiratesGBC
16. US Dept of Education Climate Adaptation Plan Sept 2021
17. The Climate Change Education Act | The Campaign for Climate Literacy
18. Adaptation Fund
19. Implementing Measures for Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction Mitigation of School Facilities in Haiti | Adaptation Fund
20. Building Climate Resilience: How Digital Technologies are Driving Adaptation | Digital First Magazine
21. Rethinking education for a climate-resilient future | Brookings
22. Climate change: Young people very worried - survey | BBC News
23. Climate change education for sustainable development: the UNESCO climate change initiative
24. Children: not victims, but climate change allies | World Vision
25. Four ways education can fight climate change | PreventionWeb
27. Target Project 2023 - 2025 | FAWCO
Images from Canva
