Report Highlights Climate Change Affecting Education Worldwide

The World Bank recently published a report titled “The Impact of Climate Change on Education and What to Do About It” in April 2024.

The report emphasizes the growing frequency and seriousness of extreme weather events, such as powerful storms, heat waves, rising temperatures, droughts, and floods. These events are causing the closure of schools worldwide, disrupting learning, reducing classroom attendance, hindering education, and affecting test scores. Climate change is significantly impacting the education sector.

The report terms the long-term socio-economic impacts of climate change on children’s learning as an “economic time bomb” manifested through income losses, lower productivity, and failure to reduce poverty. The long-term consequences of climate change on education threaten the education system’s goals.

The growing consequences of climate change on the education system and children’s learning call for policymakers and governments to take serious and urgent action. However, the report’s survey of 94 education policymakers across 28 low—to middle-income countries revealed that only 53% believe hotter temperatures inhibit learning.

Concrete ways that the education system mitigates climate change impacts on children’s learning

The report recommends four concrete ways in which governments can protect education systems from climate change, which include improving sector and school management of climate change through establishing early warning systems, improving awareness and skills in adapting to climate change, and implementing school-level training on how to respond to crisis to speed up response and recovery after extreme events. It also recommends that schools boost the resilience of school infrastructure and protect classrooms from heat.

New school buildings need to be built far from hazard-prone areas. Schools need to open for classroom learning for as long as possible and to the greatest extent possible, and they should avoid using these spaces as evacuation or relief centres. The length of time the child is absent from school correlates with learning losses.

Lastly and more importantly, the report pointed out that teachers and students do not have to be passive victims of climate shocks; they are agents of change and climate resilience. Integrating climate change into the school curriculum to promote understanding and awareness can drive climate action and love for nature and the environment.

Teachers and students as agents of change and climate resilience

According to the United Nations, education is a critical agent in addressing the issue of climate change, “Education can encourage people to change their attitudes and behaviour; it also helps them to make informed decisions. In the classroom, young people can be taught the impact of global warming and how to adapt to climate change. Education empowers all people but especially motivates the young to take action. Knowing the facts helps eliminate the fear of an issue frequently coloured by doom and gloom in the public arena.”

The UNESCO Programme, Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development, aims to “help people understand the impact of global warming today and increase “climate literacy” among young people.” 

An article by Robert C. Brears, “Empowering the Next Generation: Effective Strategies for Climate Change Education”, gives practical tips on how to teach climate change in classrooms, learn about its impacts, and how to adapt to it. Brears writes, “Education empowers all people and particularly motivates the young to take action. Being informed helps eliminate the fear associated with an issue often portrayed as doom and gloom in the public arena. Thus, well-prepared teachers are crucial for effective climate change education.”

He notes that “climate change education can be integrated into science, social studies, and English-language arts. “The lessons should be solution-focused and action-oriented to address mental health concerns related to anxiety over an uncertain future and other stressors. Effective teaching strategies include hands-on activities, guest speakers, and student-led research projects.”

Brears offers suggestions on the creative ways that teachers can use to teach climate change, which include:

• lab activities that can demonstrate global warming on an accessible scale,
• movies or documentaries on climate change;
• citizen science, which includes taking photos of cloud formations and measuring temperatures,
• doing research projects on critical topics like plastics and minimalism can raise environmental awareness,
• service projects like neighbourhood clean-ups, tree planting,
• recycling programmes, and
• school gardens where students can learn about soil carbon sequestration and regenerative agriculture.

“If we teach climate change right, students will value nature, become civically engaged, and be empowered to lead the changes our planet desperately needs. But start too early or focus too much on catastrophic impacts, and we could disempower and traumatise an entire generation of potential planetary heroes. The most important thing we can do is build an early foundation around loving nature.”