Sat 06 November 2021:
On Friday during the COP26 climate summit, twenty-three countries made national climate education pledges, including net-zero schools and putting climate at the center of national curriculums.
Young climate leaders gathered in Glasgow alongside negotiators, authorities, and ministers from all over the world to demand that disastrous climate threads be avoided.
Ministers of education from countries such as South Korea, Albania, and Sierra Leone have vowed to decarbonize the education sector and develop school resources.
“Wherever I have been in the world, I have been struck by the passion and the commitment of young people to climate action,” COP26 President Alok Sharma said in a statement.
The voices of young people must be heard and reflected in these negotiations here at COP, he said.
“I am also aware of the fear and anxiety many of them feel about the future of the planet, including my own children,” he added.
Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate activist, stated on Friday that the summit has failed and it is no secret.
Thunberg told a crowd of tens of thousands in Glasgow’s main George Square that COP26 has simply become “a PR event” where leaders give beautiful speeches and announce commitments and targets, while the governments of the “global north countries are still “refusing to address climate action.”
Half the national curricula don’t mention climate change
Only 53 per cent of the national curricula in 100 countries surveyed incorporated climate change in their curriculum, according to a new report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The depth and priority of related subjects, if present, were low, UNESCO found.
The report said:
Across all regions, most environment-related references in education policy and curriculum documents were to framings of ‘environment’ in contrast to ‘sustainability’, ‘climate change’ or ‘biodiversity’.
Fewer than 40 per cent of the teachers were confident about explaining the severity of climate change to the students and 30 per cent knew how to explain the effects of the global phenomenon in their locality.
The low awareness among teachers can be attributed to the lack of proper training in most countries. Around 36 per cent of the respondents did not include environmental themes in any teacher training modules, the organisation said.
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