climate change education case study

Climate change: educating students to fight the crisis

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With the latest UN climate report containing worrying evidence that climate change is having a major effect on all aspects of the environment, how can teachers help children and adults to sort through the growing mass of information, avoid being overwhelmed, and come to an understanding of the challenges, and potential solutions, to what the UN Secretary-General has called “an existential crisis”?

A UN programme for schools is looking to make education a central part of the international response to climate change, and empower students with the knowledge they need to fight the crisis, and adapt to its impacts.

For Natukunda Edetruda, a student at Immaculate Heart School, Uganda, it is important for young people to play a key role in fighting climate change. “The future lies in the hands of the youth, and the youth have a role to play to either destroy it or to keep it. I believe that change begins with an individual and, as an individual, I believe that I should be empowered to protect the environment”.

Natakunda’s school is one of 258 educational establishments, in 25 countries, that took part in a pilot project organized by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO ) Associated Schools Network ( ASPnet ), aimed at integrating sustainability, including climate action, into every aspect of school life.

Students and teachers at Immaculate Heart school have taken part in a diverse range of sustainability-related activities, including using recycled glass to make glaze for use in ceramics classes, and constructing a water filter to prevent diseases associated with dirty water.

Other schools in the programme focused on improving the built environment. Waldorf School in Namibia has offset the environmental impact of the school building by planting trees and vegetation, and St. Jude School in Costa Rica has replaced its air conditioners with more environmentally-friendly alternatives, and the students of Cours Saint Marie de Hann in Senegal made a hanging garden from recycled bottles and tyres.

The feedback from schools has been extremely positive, demonstrating a number of positive outcomes. Participating schools greened their premises, improving water, waste and energy management, and the overall health and well-being of school communities; students and teachers developed a stronger environmental conscience, and a vision of how their schools and communities can become more sustainable, and resilient to climate change.

Schools can empower students to change their behaviour and take action for the planet Sabine Detzel, outgoing International Coordinator, UNESCO Associated Schools Network

“There is an enormous wave of optimism that comes out of a project like this’ says Sabine Detzel, outgoing International Coordinator of ASPnet. “You see that people are interested to engage and are ready to do things, and that schools, in a very short time, can be transformed so that they motivate and empower students to change their behaviour and take action for the planet”.

The success of the pilot project, which ran from 2016 to 2018, has prompted ASPnet to invite all its member institutions – some 11,500 schools in 180 countries – to adopt a similar approach and develop action plans to counter climate change at the local level.

Getting climate-ready

The UNESCO programme demonstrates the importance of making climate action a part of every aspect of school life, from teaching to the way schools are run, and the impact they have on the local community.

The agency has produced a guide for schools, called Getting Climate-Ready , which advocates for this “whole-school” approach. Several benefits have been identified by teachers, such as more meaningful and hands-on learning opportunities, significant reductions in the schools’ ecological footprints, and savings through more efficient use of resources.

For example, at Colégio Israelita Brasileiro, a school in Rio de Janeiro, everyone at the school, from janitors to teachers, students and support staff, participates in climate-related learning activities. These include building solar and bamboo bicycle racks, and converting used cooking oil into biodiesel. The activities have created bonds between different members of the school community, and brought about a sense of belonging and pride.

At the First Experimental Lyceum, a school in Gennadeio, Greece, an innovative approach has been taken to climate action teaching: biology and chemistry students worked in groups to investigate climate change, virus transmission and the dynamics of ecosystems, using computer simulations.

The findings were then applied to their school building, to find its environmental weaknesses and develop a plan to improve it. This approach was found to engage students, and enrich their knowledge about real-world problems.

Whilst some subjects have an obvious link to climate action (for example, geography and the sciences), the guide suggest ways that many other subjects can include the topic.

History, for example, can examine how societies have, in the past, reacted to environmental challenges. Language and literature classes can help students to develop the communication skills needed to respond to local and global issues, mathematics students can produce graphs showing the change in school energy use, and civics students can interview local officials on the actions they are taking to address the problem.

‘Almost all countries’ educating children about climate change

Encouragingly, nearly all countries have committed to climate change education,  a  UNESCO report released in December 2019 has revealed.

The study found that the most common commitment is to the raising of public awareness, and that cognitive learning is more commonly discussed (i.e. integrating climate knowledge into classroom teaching), rather than social and emotional or behavioural learning. However, it also showed that actual progress is currently hard to monitor, because of a lack of data.

The UN is calling for nothing less than a transformation of the global economy in which technology, science, finance and ingenuity are all focused on ensuring a sustainable future for all.

However, this will only happen if school-leavers have the skills needed to answer the demands of this new, greener economy, and that will require strong leadership from all sectors of society, including governments, international organizations, the private sector and civil society.

• Established in 1953, ASPnet contributes to the transformation of education systems and policies, through the creation of innovative content and teaching techniques,
• current membership covers over 11 500 schools from all levels of education in 180 countries,
• ASPnet is currently looking for partnerships with organizations interested in engaging with climate change education, and willing to contribute funding. Interested organizations can email ASPnet here .
• climate education

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Study Protocol

Climate change and health in school-based education: A scoping review protocol

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Faculty of Health Sciences, Universitätsstraße Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

Roles Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation University of Bremen, Faculty of Human and Health Sciences, Mary-Somerville, Bremen, Germany

• Lira Ramadani, 
• Sudeepa Khanal, 
• Melanie Boeckmann

• Published: March 1, 2023
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282431
• Reader Comments

Taking into account the adverse impacts of climate change on human health, the importance of increasing knowledge and gaining essential skills is necessary to mitigate and adapt to its impacts and protect human health. Researchers and experts are urging for more research in the climate-health nexus, as well as calling for efforts that establish climate and health educational goals. They encourage the development of agreed upon, articulated science-based curricula and resources addressing climate-health issues. This review aims to map out the current state of integration of climate change education in school-based education across the world and identify the human health topics included. Furthermore, it aims to explore the extents to which levels of prevention and health co-benefits of climate mitigation and adaptation are covered within the framework of school-based climate change education. Five electronic databases will be searched for peer reviewed articles in English, from year 2000-to May 2022. The findings from the study will be useful to school curricula developers looking to expand climate change education. This review will also highlight potential research gaps in education on climate change-related health in schools. The scoping review was preregistered with the Open Science Framework [registration DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8U5GK ].

Citation: Ramadani L, Khanal S, Boeckmann M (2023) Climate change and health in school-based education: A scoping review protocol. PLoS ONE 18(3): e0282431. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282431

Editor: Ozlem Boybeyi-Turer, Hacettepe University: Hacettepe Universitesi, TURKEY

Received: January 2, 2023; Accepted: February 15, 2023; Published: March 1, 2023

Copyright: © 2023 Ramadani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study. All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

1. Introduction

The levels of greenhouse gases have been increasing since the early industrial revolution, mainly due to manmade activities such as growing burning of fossil fuels along with increases in deforestation, animal husbandry, irrigated agriculture and cement manufacture [ 1 ]. Climate change is causing temperature increase, hydrologic cycle changes, sea level rises, more frequent extreme weather events and heat events [ 2 ]. These weather and climatic changes will consequently impact the incidence and geographic spread of climate-sensitive vector-, food-, and waterborne diseases, and increase diseases associated with air pollution and aeroallergens [ 3 , 4 ].

Poor air quality and hot weather due to climate change are becoming a major public health concern as there is an increasing excess of morbidity and mortality cases related to them [ 1 , 5 ]. WHO estimated that modifiable environmental factors are responsible for 23% of deaths across the world and 26% of deaths of children under the age of 5 [ 6 ]. Climate change is increasing the burden of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes for the global population, with the most vulnerable groups being children, the elderly, people with preexisting health conditions, outdoor workers, people of color, and people with low income. Children are at a higher risk due to their potentially greater exposures to climate-induced health risks, greater sensitivity, their dependence on caregivers [ 7 , 8 ], physical, physiologic, and cognitive immaturity [ 9 , 10 ].

Acknowledging the impact of a drastically changing climate, its effects on earth as well as concern for its anthropological causes, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] introduced nearly three decades ago, [ 11 ] recognizes education as a crucial way to address the challenges of climate change on an international scale [ 11 , 12 ]—as such, the UNFCCC lays the foundation for climate change education as it is seen today [ 13 ]. In today’s general consensus, climate change is no longer seen simply as merely a scientific phenomenon but regarded as “a complex climate socio-scientific issue” [ 14 ] [p. 68].

Early child development and education has been proven to be pivotal, not only to health in childhood and later life of an individual, but also impactful on a societal level [ 15 ]. Early education possibly ameliorates issues of health inequities, through enabling protection against adverse exposures during childhood thereby potentially reducing health inequity in adulthood [ 15 ]. Given the strong link between education and the health of younger generations [ 16 ], schools play a vital role, especially primary education, as they reach children at a development stage. At this age-period, children start expressing behavior and attitude, which may be potentially impactful for their future health [ 15 , 17 ]. To this end, schools are a convenient location to offer health education, either embedded in scientific subjects, physical education or as specific health courses [ 18 ].

Both mitigation and adaptation are essential in minimizing the impact of climate change on health [ 5 ]. Mitigating the climate change impacts can have direct and immediate health benefits whereas adaptation is necessary as it will decrease and avoid diseases, health-care expenditure and lost productivity [ 2 ]. Hence, addressing climate change would be highly advantageous pertaining to global health by reducing emissions and cooling temperatures through changes in the built environment [ 5 , 19 ]. Climate change education combines the scientific basics of climate change with a broader view on the interconnectedness between climate and multiple parts of human societies [ 20 ] and equips its learners with both combined mitigation and adaptation capabilities [ 3 , 14 , 21 ]. In doing so, climate change education aims to enable people across societies to make informed decisions; incite attitude and behavior changes [ 22 , 23 ] and gain essential skills to mitigate and adapt to climate change [ 10 , 20 , 21 ] and thus equip them with “climate literacy” [ 20 , 24 ].

Taking into account the adverse effects of climate impacts on health, there are emerging attempts to build momentum to shift “climate literacy” to “climate and health literacy” as recent research is increasingly emphasizing the need that health professionals, governments, businesses and the general public proactively address both climate change and its implication for public health [ 19 , 25 – 27 ]. However, existing educational frameworks still fail to adequately prepare students, are limited to health professionals and include limited content coverage and perspective [ 27 ]. A broader educational agenda at all levels of education system as a crucial component of the global response to climate change is proposed [ 26 – 28 ] with schools being the most common setting identified in existing literature for the promotion of climate and health education [ 29 – 31 ]. Limaye et al. [2020] proposes a definition for climate and health literacy by adapting the US climate literacy principles. They define a climate and health literate individual as one that “can recognize direct and indirect linkages between climate change and health, communicate risks, assess data, comprehend uncertainty, and make informed and responsible personal decisions or advocate for broader policies that protect health” [ 27 ] [p. 6]. They state that proficiency in climate and health literacy is anticipated to be developed over time, with younger students obtaining functional levels during primary and secondary education [ 27 ].

Evidence and work on the effectiveness of climate change education is still lacking, [ 32 ] however research in this nexus is increasingly gaining traction [ 3 , 30 ]. A report found that the majority of climate change programs address the causes of climate change but fewer tend to focus on issues regarding climate change mitigation, adaptation and impact reduction [ 30 ]. This study however did not address the health linkages covered in climate change education. Osama et al. [ 33 ] scoping review protocol aims at exploring the linkages of climate change and health offered in online platforms. However, the results of this scoping review have still not been published and are not available [ 33 ].

This scoping review intends to fill the gap in the research on the links between climate change education and health, with a specific focus on school-based learning environments, considering their vital role in impacting attitudes and behavior [ 15 , 17 ]. Specifically, it aims to explore the extent to which the levels of prevention, climate mitigation and adaptation, and health co-benefits are covered in school-based climate change education.

2. Materials and methods

The scoping review protocol will be reported in accordance with PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews [PRISMA-ScR]: Checklist and Explanation [ 34 ]. The review will be carried out in accordance with this protocol, and details of any changes to this protocol will be reported in the final manuscript. Additionally, the development and planning of the review and protocol is guided by the JBI [The Joanna Briggs Institute] approach and the PCC [Population [or participants]/Concept/Context] framework. The JBI approach will be used for the planning and completion of this review, being the most updated and rigorous approach to date for scoping reviews [ 35 ].

A scoping review was concluded to be the most appropriate to address the research aims as it provides an overview of the volume and distribution of the evidence base as well as highlights where more research is warranted. Scoping reviews serve to synthesize evidence and assess the scope of literature on a topic. Among other objectives, scoping reviews help determine whether a systematic review of the literature is warranted [ 34 ]. The scoping review was preregistered with the Open Science Framework [registration DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8U5GK ]. Currently, the data extraction from the included studies is being conducted.

2.1. Identifying the review question

Research questions were developed to address the research aims: “What health topics are addressed in climate change education programs offered in schools?” and “Are levels of prevention, health co-benefits of climate mitigation and adaptation covered?”.

Research question formulation was guided by item 4 in the PRISMA scoping review extension checklist [ 34 ]. Through the PCC framework, the main elements were identified (Population or participants/Concept/Context), which helped to conceptualize the review questions and the study objectives.

PCC (Population/Concept/Context) [ 36 ] framework is recommended by JBI to identify the main concepts in the primary review questions. The framework also informs the search strategy. S1 Appendix includes the PCC framework along with the keywords and medical headings used.

2.2. Identifying relevant studies

A review of the literature will be performed in PubMED, EMBASE, Web of Science [Core Collection], GreenFILE, and Education Resource Information Centre. Peer-reviewed articles will be included. Grey literature databases and repositories will not be explored.

PubMed searches were conducted initially to identify appropriate keywords and MeSH terms and develop the search strings. Then fitting search strings were developed for the other databases as well. The search sting includes MeSH and keywords related to “education”, “climate change”, “health”, “schools”. Truncation (‘*’), wildcards, and Boolean operators (AND/OR) are used, as appropriate, to form the search terms.

The librarian of the University of Bielefeld was consulted for the development of the search strings for all six databases. The search strings for each database can be found in S2 Appendix .

2.3. Study selection

The study will consider all relevant studies from 2000 onwards without any geographical restriction. The review will focus on primary and secondary, thus excluding higher education. There has been limited research throughout the 1990s regarding climate change education, with the early 2000s seeing emerging research in this field [ 29 ]. Additionally, research on the climate change and health nexus gained traction after the Millennium Development Goals adoption in 2000 [ 37 ].

Only publications in English language will be considered. Grey literature available in the public domain from websites, in the form of curricula, journal, reports, process documentation etc., will not be considered for the review, due to the methodological challenges that it presents and the reduced reproducibility.

2.3.1. Exclusion criteria.

• Publications published prior to 2000
• Non-English publications
• Grey literature, review papers, book reviews, unpublished conference papers, books and chapters, commentaries and editorials

Titles and abstracts yielded by the search strategy will be uploaded to Endnote, where articles from different databases will be combined and duplicates will be removed. Two reviewers (LR, SK) will independently screen all titles and abstracts against the eligibility criteria to identify relevant studies. Studies that meet the criteria will then be accessed as full-text and screened against the eligibility criteria. A log of the excluded studies will be kept stating the reason for exclusion. In cases of ambiguity or disagreement, a decision of eligibility for inclusion will be made after consultation with a third reviewer (MB). Further, any study found not matching the inclusion criteria will be removed during the full-text review.

2.4. Extracting data

LR will perform data charting in Microsoft Excel. The first version of data extraction sheets will be piloted by LR and SK and adjusted if necessary. LR will mainly perform data extraction for included references. SK and MB will countercheck the work of LR.

2.5. Collating, summarizing and reporting the results

Data will be extracted and collected using a custom Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Extracted data will include authors’ name and publication year, type of publication, age group of learners, geographical location, educational setting, duration of program, health topics, and content focus. Finally, results will be presented in table format and summarized in text format. Finally, a narrative summary of the review findings will be provided, using frequencies and thematic analysis [ 38 ].

2.6. Institutional review board statement

Not Applicable. This study will be a review of already published and publicly available data retrieved from the databases mention above (see section 2.2). Ethical concerns related to the involvement of humans or other are not applicable in this case. Upon completion of the review, a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal will be prepared.

3. Limitations

It is possible that our review will not include all articles which have been published in every journal as some may not be accessible or may be missed due to diverse terminology used. Another limitation will be the inclusion of English language studies and literature only, as this will mean that evidence published in languages other than English will not be included in the scoping review. Also, methodology quality appraisals of the studies and evidence included in the scoping review will not be executed, which is a potential limitation. However, Arksey and O’Malley [ 39 ] and Pollock et al.[ 40 ] state that quality appraisals of evidence is not the focus of scoping reviews.

4. Conclusions

This review is the most recent to comprehensively report the breadth of literature on the relationship between climate change and health education in school-based education. Its main aim is to understand to what extent health topics are covered in climate change education in primary and secondary schools and the nature thereof. The scoping review will conform to the rigorous methodology manual by the Joanna Briggs Institute. The findings from this scoping review will be useful to school curricula developers looking to expand climate change education. This review will also highlight potential research gaps in education on climate change-related health in schools.

Supporting information

S1 checklist. prisma-p 2015 checklist..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282431.s001

S1 Appendix. Appendix A—PCC framework.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282431.s002

S2 Appendix. Appendix B—Search strings and search run.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282431.s003

• View Article
• PubMed/NCBI
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• 11. UNFCCC. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. United Nations 1992.
• 12. UNESCO. Not just hot air: Putting climate change education into practice. Education sector Paris; 2015.
• 15. Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Achieving health equity: from root causes to fair outcomes. World Health Organization 2007.
• 20. Council NR. Climate change education: goals, audiences, and strategies: a workshop summary: National Academies Press; 2012.
• 24. Chang C-H, Pascua L. The state of climate change education–reflections from a selection of studies around the world. Taylor & Francis; 2017. p. 177–9.
• 32. Pidgeon N, Fischhoff B. The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks. Effective risk communication: Routledge; 2013. p. 345–58.
• 37. WHO. Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] 2018 [Available from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/millennium-development-goals-[mdgs]#:~:text=The%20United%20Nations%20Millennium%20Declaration,are%20derived%20from%20this%20Declaration .

A Global View of Education and Climate Change

• Posted March 1, 2024
• By Ryan Nagelhout
• Climate Change and Education
• Global Education

Professor Fernando Reimers can see the interconnectivity of it all. So many things impact how students learn, he says, and the unique circumstances that climate change presents in his work are simply another challenge educators will face amid an ever-changing landscape.

Reimers is HGSE’s Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of International Education and director of Harvard’s Global Education Innovation Initiative. Ultimately, his interest is in finding the best ways to teach children how to thrive in the 21st century, to help them gain the skills to contribute to more inclusive and sustainable communities. That century has and will continue to be impacted by the effects of climate change. As weather patterns change and natural disasters disrupt learning around the world, schools will need to adapt.

Despite the daunting challenges climate change presents to this and future generations, Reimers speaks with optimism about how humanity can meet the moment and create change.

“I think it’s very, very important to be hopeful in the face of existential challenges,” he says, offering an anecdote he shares with his students about the power of writing and what humans have learned over the course of the last 35,000 years. “If you take a long view in thinking about the history of humanity, you understand how necessary hope has been to inspire the human effort and collaboration which have helped us come so far as a species.”

Below, Reimers talks about his education and climate work, teaching students beyond doom and gloom, and lessons climate educators can learn from the pandemic.

What does climate change’s impact look like in the work you do?

The big framing conversation is: What is an education worth having in the 21st century for a student? What is it that students need to learn at every level of the education system that will prepare them well to understand the challenges they’re going to live through? To be motivated to do something and have the skills to address those challenges? Those challenges most certainly include climate, but they do not exclusively include climate.

A challenge that’s very salient and just as urgent as climate is the sustainability of democracy. By every count, democracy is in decline in the United States and in many democratic countries around the world. And it is in decline because people don’t have the skills to sustain it. Universities are currently doing a pretty dismal job — they can’t seem to be equipping students with the skills to talk across political divides, to compromise and reach agreements. Far too many students do not seem to understand what difference it makes to vote, let alone engaging civically for the improvement of our communities and institutions.

And so climate is one thing. Democracy, poverty, and inequality are others. The big disruption to the world of work that AI is going to bring about are some of the other changes in the larger context that educational institutions should respond to. These are some of the existential challenges that should frame a conversation about the goals of educational institutions.

"There is an educational imperative to help students understand climate change as one of the many challenges that humanity will experience, but to do it in a way that gives people hope and cultivates agency."

How can educators better teach climate change literacy?

A climate literacy curriculum should help students understand the process of climate change and how it impacts humans. Students should be able to access the evolving scientific consensus on climate change, as reflected for example in the reports of the International Panel on Climate Change. But they should be able to have this understanding in a way that doesn’t develop a sense of doom and gloom, a sense of hopelessness. In a review of research on the effectiveness of climate change curricula, available in my book Education and Climate Change , I found that many of them contributed to undermine students’ sense of efficacy in facing this challenge. Too many of our youth experience unproductive and debilitating anxiety about climate change.

There is an educational imperative to help students understand climate change as one of the many challenges that humanity will experience, but to do it in a way that gives people hope and cultivates the agency and the knowledge to understand what is a green economy, and to be contributors to a transition to a more sustainable way of living.

What are the larger issues at play with climate change and education?

We know that climate change is going to vanish around 20 million jobs worldwide connected to the oil industry. But it is going to generate three times more new jobs in industries related to climate. What is the implication, for example, for tertiary institutions? People need to know where those jobs are, universities need to have both undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees, diplomas, certificates, that prepare people for those jobs. There are already many universities around the world planning new fields of study and the development of transversal skills in the curriculum associated with climate change. We need to learn from those ongoing efforts and accelerate them.

You’ve worked with Times Higher Education and recently finished a study focused on how universities approach sustainability and climate change. What was the main takeaway?

Yes, the forthcoming issue of Daedalus , the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, includes an article I wrote titled “Educating Students for Climate Action: Distraction or Higher Education Capital?” in which I examine how climate change education is evolving in universities and discuss which approaches are most promising.

I have also chaired, for the last few years, a panel that reviews university innovation in Asia on climate education, as part of a larger effort of the Times Higher Education to spotlight higher education innovation.

What I have learned from that work, and discuss in the paper is that the universities that most effectively address climate change education embed this as one element in their strategy, and then make sure that there are synergies across four activities that they can carry out: research, education of their own students, extension — which includes outreach and education but in many cases it includes working with city governments or state governments helping them develop a green economy transition strategy — and then management of their own operations and infrastructure.

The climate change innovation awards and the impact rankings of the Times Higher Education make visible universities around the world where you see the power of having a vision, a coherent vision that aligns what the university does in all of those four domains. There are many more universities that do a little bit in some of those categories, but work that is piecemeal and affecting a rather small number of students is different as strategically planned work that encompasses the entire institution.

You were also part of a Harvard task force to create a Climate Change Education plan for Harvard and for the Ed School. What did the task force do?

The task force was created by President Larry Bacow. It included faculty from all schools at Harvard. We each worked with our colleagues in our schools identifying opportunities to advance climate education in our schools and for the university as a whole.

In my conversations with our colleagues at HGSE and with the other members of the task force we aimed to do two things: develop a plan for our own school and one for the university, identifying low-hanging fruit, things that could be done without tremendous additional resources over the next 1–3 years, and then more ambitious goals that would require raising some money.

In my conversations with 18 colleagues here at the Ed School to prepare this plan I realized that there is genuine interest among our faculty on this topic, and there is a real appetite to do something. That plan is guiding some of the work of the newly created Salata Institute .

"The way that you make progress tackling big and complex problems is to break them into smaller pieces, and to begin somewhere. And when you solve those problems there, that expands your zone of action and of understanding."

You’ve mentioned that one way to tackle large and complex challenges like climate change is to focus on things at a much smaller scale to make it more manageable and more effective.

That’s exactly right, the way that you make progress tackling big and complex problems is to break them into smaller pieces, and to begin somewhere. And when you solve those problems there, that expands your zone of action and of understanding. Then you move to other parts of the challenge, and so on. I discuss this approach in a recent article : a transition to a green economy addressing these is essential to our mission, not an additional project. As a result of integrating this priority in the institutional strategy, then each person should know what they can personally do within their sphere of influence, within the things they normally do, to make a contribution to advancing this goal. 

That’s how education reform gets implemented — getting to the point where each person understands what their role is to contribute to the larger goal without having to be a hero. Understanding the efforts to contribute to strategic goals not as extra work, not as something that requires work to be done in the evenings, the weekends; but as a different way to tackle what we already do.

How have you followed this approach as you have begun to work on climate change education?

The way I began to tackle this issue was not with new research priorities, it was first embedding into my policy class a focus on the relationship between policy and climate education. Inviting my students to work with governments and other education institutions examining how policy could support a transition to a green economy. The first time I did that I had only four teams of students, the next time I had more. We then published this work, to widen the reach of this work. This simple approach of working with our students to examine how the subjects we study in our classes relate to climate change is within the reach of many different faculties in this university.

What lessons from our response to the pandemic could help address climate change?

The full story of the education impact of the pandemic, and of our responses to it, is still developing. It’s not all been discovered yet. But there are clearly some parallels as well as some differences. With the pandemic, we didn’t really have a choice about an unplanned event disrupting education and upending our lives. Climate change is largely caused by human actions, and our responses will mediate how it impacts our lives. That’s basically what the efforts of many people working on climate change have been about for the last 20 or so years, to get humans to understand that we need to live differently. We need to consume differently. We need to share the financial burden of these adjustments across countries differently if we’re going to reduce the speed at which global warming is taking place. But getting a species of 8 billion members to change their ways of life is most definitely a complicated task. I’m not sure we’ve ever done it in anything else. That is the challenge, and education is absolutely indispensable to addressing it. 

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Climate Learning Resources

Global climate change is rapidly impacting all life on earth. But impacts of climate change are complex, uneven, and worsening, with people from poverty-impacted and BIPOC communities often experiencing impacts most sharply. We must be prepared to understand and respond to climate science. Education is a vital context for building capacity for just, community-driven adaptation and resilience efforts as well as for promoting the enactment of equitable mitigation efforts around the world.

Justice-centered climate change learning is complex, but urgent. To support educators to build capacity for this work, we are creating a suite of resources focused on different aspects of this work. Climate science learning has to happen across PK-12 classroom, in informal education and outdoor contexts, and in community-based learning settings.

To that end, we have created the following kinds of resources on this page:

• STEM Teaching Tools on Climate (professional learning resources)
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• 3D Assessment Examples for Climate Science Learning (from the ClimeTime project)

Climate & Environmental Justice in Education Graduate-Level Course

Research briefs: communicating climate change, climate and environmental education articles for educators, stem teaching tools on climate.

STEM Teaching Tools are short, two-page briefs on particular topics in education. We have worked with collaborators to develop STEM Teaching Tools on the following themes:

Why Teach Climate Change?

Pedagogy with a foundation of justice and ecological caring, selecting justice-centered, local anchor phenomena, focusing climate change learning on solutions, building partnerships with scientists, families, and other community members.

STEM Teaching Tool #12 Scientific literacy involves understanding global climate change & what people can do about it

STEM Teaching Tool #44 Addressing controversial science topics in the K-12 classroom

STEM Teaching Tool #10 Teaching STEM In Ways that Respect and Build Upon Indigenous Peoples' Rights

STEM Teaching Tool #78 Navigating the Political Dimensions of Climate Change Teaching and Learning

STEM Teaching Tool #70 How can environmental educators practice intersectional environmentalism?

STEM Teaching Tool #80 How to productively reframe eco-anxiety as a science communicator or educator

STEM Teaching Tool #61 Using science investigations to develop caring practices for social-ecological systems

STEM Teaching Tool #55 Why it is crucial to make cultural diversity visible in STEM education?

STEM Teaching Tool #11 Implementing Meaningful STEM Education with Indigenous Students & Families

STEM Teaching Tool #57 How place-based science education strategies can support equity for students, teachers, and communities

STEM Teaching Tool #71 How can you advance equity and justice through science teaching?

STEM Teaching Tool #84 Let’s Talk Climate! Bridging Climate Justice Learning and Action Across School, Home, and Community

STEM Teaching Tool #67 Focusing Science and Engineering Learning on Justice-Centered Phenomena across PK-12

STEM Teaching Tool #69 Using Local Phenomena to Communicate Climate Solutions

STEM Teaching Tool #87 Identifying local environmental justice phenomena for science and engineering investigations

STEM Teaching Tool #68 Keeping Climate Science Learning and Instruction Focused on Creating Solutions and Building Community Resilience

STEM Teaching Tool #73 Connecting science instruction to neighborhood life through collaborative design with community

STEM Teaching Tool #90 Designing Climate Change Learning for Action

STEM Teaching Tool #93 Think globally, act locally: Promote the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through community-centered learning

STEM Teaching Tool #74 Designing and participating in community and citizen science efforts to support equity and justice

STEM Teaching Tool #77 Building Family-Centered Models for Science Education through Learning in Places

STEM Teaching Tool #82 Supporting observations, wonderings, systems thinking & “Should We” deliberations through Learning in Places

The Climate Teacher Education Collaborative

The STEM Teaching Tools team at UW Seattle runs the Climate Teacher Education Collaborative, a network building resources and capacity to teach about community climate justice projects and civic response to the climate crisis in teacher education programs. The initiative is hosting webinars and events; engaging small collaborative teams in developing open education resources (OER) for use in teacher education; and developing educative case studies of community climate responses. Follow the project on Twitter at @ClimateEdTools and explore resources below!

Sept. 2022: Using Theatrical Performance to Promote Climate Justice

The September 2022 Climate Teacher Ed Webinar featured Nick Slie, the Co-Artistic Director of Mondo Bizarro and a New Orleans born performer, producer, and cultural organizer. Nick share work from multiple projects that take an intersectional arts-science approach to highlight issues of climate justice in the Mississippi Delta region of the U.S. He draws in examples from science- and arts-based water literacy instruction that is foundationally centered in climate justice, including the Invisible Rivers and the Cry You One projects.

Aug. 2022: Community Climate Justice Education

In the August 2022 Climate Teacher Ed webinar , Jason Foster and Ayesha T. Qazi-Lampert discuss the power of teaching about the environment and climate using community-centered, racial justice pedagogy. Drawing from their experiences working in the Chicago Public School System, Jason and Ayesha share resources that connect teachers with environmental current events happening in their own neighborhoods, and they encourage educators to forge connections with each other and with community members. They highlight the importance of decolonizing biases, learning the history of environmental justice, communicating about justice issues broadly, and developing a critical lens that is interconnected, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational.

July 2022: Sustaining Community-School Relationships Around Shared Visions of Climate Justice & Science Ed.

In the July 2022 Climate Teacher Ed webinar , David Segura, Danny Morales-Doyle, Karen Salas, Amy Levingston and Susan Nelson describe how a long-term community-school partnership has been able to focus curriculum and social action on environmental justice issues. They share the history of the partnership, the frameworks for justice-focused science education they use, multiple justice-centered curricular examples tied to youth-community action, and guidance on how to take up this inspiring work. There is so much to learn from this work!

June 2022: (W)holistic Science Pedagogy and Climate Justice

In the June 2022 Climate Teacher Ed Webinar , Dr. Alexis Patterson Williams and Dr. Salina Gray discuss their (W)holistic Science Pedagogy framework and share two climate justice curriculum examples. Their approach centers intentional self-work and emotional reflection by educators, engages students in a broad image of science and supports them in taking justice-centered action on climate. They describe the power of focusing instruction on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and share a broad range of supporting resources.

May 2022: Teaching for Climate Justice and Student Action

The May 2022 Climate Teacher Ed Webinar featured Tim Swinehart, a Geography and Environmental Justice teacher at Lincoln High School and a teacher candidate instructor at the Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education, in Portland, Oregon. In this webinar, Tim highlights multidisciplinary ways of engaging high school youth in different forms of climate justice efforts – from public literary performances to crafting educational policy to direct political action. He describes how educators can take up a justice-centered climate approach in their teaching and inspire students to get involved in community action and activism. Tim shares details about his deep expertise with environmental activism in the classroom and shares resources for engaging youth in different kinds of action on climate justice.

April 2022: It's Not Only About the Content

This webinar from April 2022 features Lindsey Kirkland, senior climate change education manager for Climate Generation. In her work, Lindsey designs justice-centered climate change education programs for the public and professional development for K-12 educators. In this webinar, she describes the organization’s more recent work to build deep, justice-centered regional networks for teacher learning. She also discusses the power of storytelling to build understanding, empathy and relationships, telling stories from her own journey toward anti-racism in climate justice work.

March 2022: Leveraging Environmental Justice to Unlock the Potential of Education

The March 2022 Climate Teacher Ed Webinar features Drs. Kelley Lê and Juan Manuel Rubio (both from University of California Irvine), who share their educational efforts connecting environmental justice, history, science, and civic action. They trace how a local community has been investigating and taking action in response to a history of soil pollution—and how educators can bring that kind of socio-scientific topic into secondary science instruction. They discuss how science and science education need to be reframed in order to focus on working towards justice.

Feb. 2022: Pedagogical Commitments for Climate Justice Education

This video features the work of Dr. Fikile Nxumalo (University of Toronto) and Pablo Montes PhC (University of Texas at Austin), who focus on place-based, environmental justice-focused approaches to early childhood education working from Indigenous knowledges and Black feminist geographies. Dr. Nxumalo and Mr. Montes described educational examples from their efforts and offer guidance for educators and teacher educators based on their article “Pedagogical Commitments for Climate Justice Education” (published recently in the NSTA Connected Science Learning journal) which focuses on anti-coloniality, radical relationality, and reciprocity.

Climate Justice Lesson Plans for Preservice Teacher Educators

Centering Environmental and Climate Justice in Education By Deb L. Morrison & Philip Bell

In this lesson, preservice teachers will develop an understanding of climate justice as multifaceted, learn strategies for identifying and engaging learners with justice-centered phenomena, and explore case studies of environmental and climate justice phenomena.

Leveraging Environmental Justice to Unlock the Potential of Education By Jeanne Norris, Kelley Lê, Juan Manuel Rubio, Deb L. Morrison & Philip Bell

In this lesson, preservice teachers learn to define key aspects of environmental justice, describe rationales and strategies for engaging students in environmental justice learning activities, explore with learners the socio-historic contexts that influence different traditions of scientific activity and knowledge production, and use environmental justice-centered curricula resources to focus instruction on societally relevant science.

It's Not Only About the Content: People, Culture, and Processes within Climate Justice Education By Jeanne Norris, Lindsey Kirkland, Kristen Poppleton, & Deb L. Morrison

This lesson supports preservice teachers to describe their personal stories around climate justice and reflect on how these experiences shape their work. Then, the tool helps them define and develop a network of local and national climate justice partners to engage in climate justice learning with youth.

Teaching for Climate Justice and Student Action By Jeanne Norris, Tim Swinehart, Deb L. Morrison, & Philip Bell

This tool for preservice educators helps them focus on student climate action, learning about instructional approaches and how to navigate systems to make space for this type of learning.

(W)holistic Science Pedagogy & Climate Justice By Dr. Alexis Patterson Williams, Dr. Salina Gray, Taiji Nelson & Philip Bell

This PD session helps preservice educators apply the (W)holistic Science Pedagogy framework to their own teaching, with a focus on climate justice learning for social action, liberation, and healing.

Using Theatrical Performance to Promote Climate Justice By Jeanne Norris, Nick Slie, and Deb L. Morrison

This PD session helps preservice educators explore ways to add the arts and center place-connections into their own work in climate justice learning.

3D Assessment Examples for Climate Science Learning

In collaboration with the ClimeTime Initiative , we have created a shared Google Drive folder with assessments designed to support climate change science teaching and learning. These assessments are intended to support educators in understanding the nature of equitable assessment practices in the context of climate science learning across a range of grade levels and topics. The ClimeTime Initiative Assessment Project has further details. Access the full folder here or individual assessments below.

Elementary School

• Breathing Easier : This task is for 4th grade elementary students studying natural resources (renewable/nonrenewable) and/or air pollution. It is designed to reveal and develop students abilities to utilize multiple sources of data to support a claim.
• Flooded Playground : This task is for 4th grade students. It is designed to assess students abilities to generate and compare multiple solutions to a problem considering criteria and constraints.
• Growing Plants : This task is for late-elementary (3-5) students, especially while studying about the needs of plants. Students use a simulation as a model of an investigation into the Reveal and develop student abilities to model the interactions within and between human body systems.
• Patterns in Weather : This task is targeted to students in pre-K to kindergarten classroom or other setting where the same teacher sees the same students daily. Collecting weather data across time supports data collection and analysis practices. Students can use their own data to look for patterns across time.
• Trash Talk : This task is for 5th grade students. After class discussions about trash, litter, and available programs for recycling and composting, students collect trash and sort it into “recycling,” “food waste/compostable,” and “landfill.”
• Washington River : This task is for fourth grade students. It is designed to assess students’ ability to identify erosion from observational data and assess student understanding of the causes and effects of erosion.
• Weather and Regions : This task is for third grade students. It is designed to assess students’ ability to understand weather data and use data to describe climate patterns.

Middle School

• Lake Youngs : This task is for middle school students, especially while studying body systems or algal blooms. It is designed to reveal and develop student abilities to model the interactions within and between human body systems.
• Melting Ice : This task is for middle school students studying energy transfer and/or particle motion. It is designed to assess students understanding of energy transfer and develop skills creating or modifying a model to describe an energy transfer phenomenon.
• Modeling Temperature Change : This task is for students in grades 6-8 studying energy transfers. It is designed to evaluate student understanding of thermal energy transfer and reveal and develop student abilities to model thermal energy.
• We've got Water : This task is targeted to students in grades 6–8 studying ecology and human impacts on the environment. It is designed to gather information about students’ ability to identify relationships between a human activity and environmental impacts on water resources.

High School

• Acidic Seas : This task is for high school chemistry students studying pH and/or equilibrium or for high school environmental science students studying ocean acidification. It is designed to explore student understanding of and solutions for ocean acidification.
• Carbon Footprint : This task is designed for high school students studying the impacts of human activities on the carbon cycle and/or global warming. This is designed to assess student modeling practices and assess student thinking around human impacts on the carbon cycle and/or global warming
• Climate and Human Health : This assessment is designed for high school students studying climate change and/or the effects of environmental conditions on humans. After discussing climate change and local impacts, students explore the Department of Health’s Washington Tracking Network (WTN) to see if there are correlations between air quality and asthma hospitalization rates. Students incorporate what they have learned to develop an argument using claim, evidence, and reasoning.
• Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) Facility Proposal : This task is for high school students, especially in Chemistry or Environmental Science. It is designed to help them learn about student connections related to natural gas energy systems and marine-land environments in the context of tribal-urban communities and to reveal and develop student abilities to compare and develop arguments for managing energy needs.

Plus, the folder includes templates for these assessments that you can download and use to create your own.

How can we learn to create a more just world where all humans and other creatures can thrive?

This winter, team members Philip Bell and Nancy Price taught a course at the University of Washington on climate and environmental justice in education. They shared the course description , readings , resources , and more on their site , which you can access for free.

Explore how themes of ecological care, multispecies wellbeing, and equity relate to climate and environmental education. Check out the graduate seminar online here, and join the inquiry on Twitter at #UWClimateEd .

The Relating Research to Practice project developed 1 4 research briefs to summarize and clarify research on communicating climate change . Access briefs on topics like trusted scientific sources , the relationship between beliefs and action , and using story in science communication .

Read all the Relating Research to Practice briefs on communicating climate change.

• Designing for Future Action: How STEAM Programming Can Support Youth Engagement in Community Changemaking Projects , Connected Science Learning January-Feburary 2022 By Mairéad Hurley, Abby Rhinehart, Philip Bell, Autumn Brown, Nancy Price, and Joseph Roche
• Exploring Climate Justice Learning: Visions, Challenges, and Opportunities By Deb L. Morrison and Philip Bell
• STEM Teaching Tools: Guidance for Justice-Centered Climate Change Teaching and Learning By Philip Bell and Abby Rhinehart
• Sustaining Community-School Relationships Around Shared Visions of Climate Justice and Science Teaching By David Segura, Daniel Morales-Doyle, Susan Nelson, Amy Levingston, and Karen Canales
• Facilitating Emancipatory and Justice-Centered Environmental and Climate Learning By Pranjali Upadhyay and Rae Jing Han
• Pedagogical Commitments for Climate Justice Education By Fikile Nxumalo and Pablo Montes
• Building Teacher Professional Learning Infrastructure for Climate Justice Education By Meredith Lohr, Stacy Meyer, and Deb L. Morrison
• (W)holistic Science Pedagogy By Alexis Patterson Williams and Salina Gray
• Social Justice–Centered Science Teaching and Learning By Philip Bell and Deb L. Morrison
• Creating Science Learning Environments in Which Indigenous Students Can Thrive By Megan Bang, Nikki McDaid-Morgan, and Alice Tsoodle
• Justice-Centered Science Pedagogy: Leaning Beyond the Boundaries of Equity and Culturally Responsive Practices By Jordyn Frost and Anastasia Sanchez
• Investigating Environmental Racism in the High School Biology Classroom By Jason Foster

Today's Climate

As extreme weather batters schools, students are pushing for more climate change education, though climate change education varies across public schools in the u.s., extreme weather impacts are affecting them all..

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Climate Change Is Pushing Animals Closer to Humans, With Potentially Catastrophic Consequences

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In the U.S. and around the world, the impact of climate change on primary education is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, both inside and outside the classroom. As heat and flooding threaten the physical environment, pedagogical—and political—debates rage over how and what to teach students about their rapidly warming planet.

Often a reflection of the political majority in a state, climate curriculums vary across public schools in the U.S., and now students themselves are advocating for more climate change education. However, these efforts have been met with mixed responses from school boards and state legislatures. 

Today, I am diving into the student-led push to expand climate change instruction across classrooms as schools struggle against the most severe climate impacts. 

Buckling Under the Elements: While “snow days” in some parts of the country have decreased due to shorter winters , other weather-related school cancellations have surged, from “wildfire days” in California to “it flooded so badly that sewage is spilling onto the street” days (that may not be the official name for them, but you get the gist). 

The latter hit Leaders High School in south Brooklyn in September, when several inches of rain overwhelmed sanitation infrastructure around the school, writes Mariana Simões for City Limits . A report from NYC’s Comptroller’s Office shared with City Limits found that 28 percent of the city’s public school buildings are vulnerable to extreme stormwater flooding, and that many of them don’t have updated infrastructure to handle a deluge. 

In some cases, particularly extreme climate-fueled weather events can keep children out of class for weeks, such as Hurricane Michael in Florida, which devastated schools across the Florida Panhandle in 2018 and kept around 45,000 students from their classrooms during recovery . 

But for many schools, a chief climate concern is the lingering and almost constant threat of heat. At the start of the school year in 2023—which scientists confirm is the warmest year in modern history —many students baked inside classrooms with little to no air conditioning, reports Wired . These high temperatures affect learning at a physiological level: Along with impacting a student’s mental health, heat causes the body to sweat, diverting blood from organs toward the skin. This can reduce oxygen in some of the body’s tissues, including the brain, which can disrupt a child’s cognition and ability to focus, research shows . 

This poses an environmental justice issue as students all around the world are struggling to beat the heat. Over the past month, a deadly heat wave has blanketed Southeast Asia, forcing governments to shut down schools and further widening the education gap in low-income countries, reports CNN . 

Climate Change Education Is a Mixed Bag: In the U.S., students are speaking out to learn more about the source of the climate impacts hitting their schools. But their efforts haven’t always been met with support. 

In February, dozens of high school and college students attended a hearing in the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul to advance a bill that would require schools to integrate climate change into their curriculums, the Associated Press reports. However, the bill was not moved forward, similar to one that New Hampshire high schoolers were advocating for in March that is now indefinitely stalled .

Oftentimes, classroom materials do not reflect current climate science. In August, Republican Gov. Ron Desantis approved a move which allows classrooms to show videos that reject the reality of climate change. Several recent studies show that while science textbooks discuss climate change, they have not kept pace with the body of new research on the subject, a trend that my colleague Kiley Bense reported on last year . 

In a recent investigation, Rolling Stone magazine and Drilled revealed that the oil and gas industry has given funding to push forward corporate goals into lesson plans produced by Discovery Education, a textbook and multimedia education provider used by half the classrooms in the U.S. In one of their lessons, which includes a logo from oil and gas lobbying organization the American Petroleum Institute, the plan advises teachers to “tell the class that in 2020, petroleum powered 90 percent of the country’s transportation.” It does not include any mention of renewable energy or climate impacts from oil-related emissions, the news outlets found.

However, other states have embraced climate change curriculums across public schools. In 2020, New Jersey became the first state to require teaching climate change at all grade levels in all subjects, from art class to physical education. Since the program began, many teachers have focused on helping kids connect with nature and brainstorm climate solutions, reports The New York Times . 

“When we shield them from so much, they’re not ready to unpack it when they learn about it, and it becomes more scary than when they understand they’re in a position where they can actively think about solutions,” Lauren Madden, a professor of elementary science education at the College of New Jersey, told the Times. “When you take kids seriously that way, and trust them with that information, you can allow them to feel empowered to make locally relevant solutions.”

Multiple states have followed New Jersey’s lead by implementing their own climate education measures, including Connecticut and California, according to the National Center for Science Education. However, as climate impacts continue to ransack schools around the world, experts say education efforts have a long way to go. 

More Top Climate News

Earlier this week, the world’s largest plant that sucks carbon emissions from the air began operating in Iceland, according to the company Climeworks , which owns the direct carbon capture facility. 

Dubbed Mammoth, the plant is expected to pull in up to 36,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually by next year, though it is not fully operational yet. While some say direct carbon capture could be critical to slowing climate change, the technology has been repeatedly criticized as expensive, distracting and unproven, though oil and gas companies have been pouring funding into its development. My colleague Nicholas Kusnutz has written about carbon capture extensively in his series “Pipe Dreams ” if you are keen to dive in deeper. While 36,000 metric tons may sound like a lot, they would represent a miniscule fraction of overall global carbon emissions, which were projected to reach 36.8  billion tons in 2023 , according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Following up on Tuesday’s newsletter, in which I covered the threats of climate change pushing wild animals closer to humans, a new study published on Wednesday adds further evidence of this trend. The study’s authors found that climate change, biodiversity loss and invasive species are making infectious disease deadlier for humans, animals and plants, Scott Dance writes for The Washington Post . 

Meanwhile, a 44-foot dead endangered whale was found on the bow of a cruise ship in New York City. While the investigation is ongoing, scientists believe the whale was likely struck while it was still alive after preliminary results revealed broken bones in its flipper and tissue damage, The New York Times reports . Shipping, cruise and fishing vessels fatally strike an estimated 20,000 whales around the world annually, though scientists believe this may be an underestimate because whale carcasses often sink to the bottom of the ocean after they are hit, laying undiscovered. As I’ve written about in the past, climate change could be making this situation worse as warming ocean temperatures reshuffle food chains, causing whales to pop up in new areas without protection. 

Kiley Price

Kiley Price is a reporter at Inside Climate News, with a particular interest in wildlife, ocean health, food systems and climate change. She writes ICN’s “Today’s Climate” newsletter, which covers the most pressing environmental news each week.

She earned her master’s degree in science journalism at New York University, and her bachelor’s degree in biology at Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Scientific American and more. She is a former Pulitzer Reporting Fellow, during which she spent a month in Thailand covering the intersection between Buddhism and the country’s environmental movement.

• @@kileyjprice
• [email protected]

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Why young Americans are pushing for climate change to be taught in schools

Laura Barrón-López Laura Barrón-López

Andrew Corkery Andrew Corkery

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-young-americans-are-pushing-for-climate-change-to-be-taught-in-schools

As the planet warms and sea levels rise, eighty-five percent of Generation Z is concerned about climate change, according to a January Marist poll. In response, states like California, Connecticut and New Jersey are teaching kids about climate change in the classroom. Lauren Madden, a professor of elementary science education at the College of New Jersey, joins Laura Barrón-López to discuss.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Laura Barron-Lopez:

Last month was the warmest April on record and the 11th straight month of record highs around the world. Today, nearly a quarter of people globally live in drought conditions.

And forecasters anticipate this year's Atlantic hurricane season will be the most active on record. All signs that climate change is an accelerating threat to the planet, and young Americans are worried about it.

In fact, 85 percent of generation Z is very or somewhat concerned about climate change, according to a Marist poll from earlier this year. In response, states like California, Connecticut, and New Jersey are now teaching kids about climate change in the classroom. One of the educators at the forefront of this is Lauren Madden, professor of elementary science education at the College of New Jersey. How do you go about incorporating climate change into a classroom curriculum?

Lauren Madden, The College of New Jersey: So in New Jersey, it's a little bit simpler than it is in some other places because we have standards that are required to be taught at all grade levels in all subject areas. So they're really developmentally appropriate and they're good tools for teachers to use to think about ways that they can connect to climate in things they're already doing in the classroom.

Could you give examples of how lessons about climate change may change from, say, first grade to 9th or 10th grade.

Lauren Madden:

Yes, that's really important to be developmentally appropriate, especially when we're talking about working with young children. So in the early years, it's really about understanding what lives around you, what's supposed to be here when things happen seasonally. And some of the differences between weather and climate.

It's not a tough concept for a young child to understand that weather is day to day changes, while climate happens over long periods of time. Whereas by the time we're in 9th or 10th grade, especially if we've built this foundation of weather and climate, and how our weather and climate are changing over time, then we can start to unpack some of the more nuanced mathematical relationships.

Why do you think it's a necessary subject to teach students?

So I think it's really important that we don't lie to children, especially young children. Our children are seeing the effects of climate change in unprecedented ways. They're experiencing changes in their day to day lives that none of us have seen before.

So, for example, last spring here in New Jersey and across the east coast, we experienced dust in the air from Canadian wildfires. And that was something that affected children, all children, their ability to play outside, their ability to go about their day to day life. And we need to be clear with kids and let them know that something is happening. And this isn't just a bunch of surprise things that are going on and scientists know what's going on.

But the other more important piece is that our economy is going to change what the future looks like and what the industries are that will be employing our children in the future will be around climate.

We also spoke with a high school art teacher in New Jersey about the impact of working climate change into her art lessons.

Carolyn McGrath, Hopewell Valley Center High School:

I feel that it's very important for students to know about the realities of the circumstances that they're living through. And as educators, I think we also have an obligation to teach students and guide students through the difficulties of not only understanding this, but also emotionally processing the severity of the situation.

How can teachers like that one, Carolyn McGrath, help students navigate anxiety and stress about climate change?

First of all, we need to be honest with them and we need to be truthful, and we need to let them know that the scientists have really good predictions out there and we have a good sense of what kinds of things are going to be happening into the future.

But I think to ease anxiety, aside from being honest and making sure that our children are well informed, we need to tell them about the types of solutions that exist already and foster their creativity and imagination to help them consider what kinds of solutions can be built in the future. And I think the best way to ease anxiety is to foster positive actions and also thoughts about large scale solutions that they can contribute to as children and in the future.

We've seen pushback in primarily conservative states when it comes to teachings about the history of racism or LGBTQ studies. Does teaching climate change receive similar pushback from some parents, and are those parents seeking to restrict what their kids may be able to learn?

So I understand in many parts of the country there is pushback about teaching about climate change from politicians as well as from some parents. From my experience, I did a research study not too long ago where we surveyed parents in New Jersey, and what they really wanted was tools for helping mitigate student climate anxiety, as well as information that they can make sure they were having a consistent conversation with their children at home and supporting what teachers were doing. But across the country, I don't know that story is necessarily the same.

I mean, in states like Florida, they're seeing rising sea levels and record temperatures. But Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill that deletes most mentions of climate change in state law.

What do you say to educators in states like Florida about how to teach climate change when they may be dealing with elected leaders who reject that it exists?

So I've certainly heard from science educators at national conferences who've been working with teachers in Florida who are personally choosing to learn more about how to integrate climate change into their classrooms. And there's a lot of fear. I was at a conference session where were asked not to take pictures of anything for fear of disclosing who the teachers were. I think teachers are our nation's greatest asset, and they are naturally innovators and creative people.

So I know many teachers in Florida are doing things like talking about climate solutions without calling them climate solutions, talking about green innovation and things like that. But we owe it to children, especially children who are facing sea level rise, droughts, extreme heat, to know what it is that's happening around them and also to know what some of the things are they can do to mitigate those changes.

Professor Lauren Madden, thank you so much for your time.

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Laura Barrón-López is the White House Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, where she covers the Biden administration for the nightly news broadcast. She is also a CNN political analyst.

Andrew Corkery is a national affairs producer at PBS News Weekend.

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Education case studies, around-the-world case studies on unicef's education programme.

Education knowledge management dashboard

Case studies

Adolescent education and skills.

Improving students' mental health in Bangladesh

Improving the quality of lower secondary through inquiry-based learning and skills development (Argentina)

An online career portal strengthens career guidance among secondary students in India and helps them plan for future educational and work opportunities (India)

Lessons on youth-led action towards climate advocacy and policy (India)

Learning, life skills and citizenship education and social cohesion through game-based sports – Nashatati Programme (Jordan)

Mental health promotion and suicide prevention in schools (Kazakhstan)

A multi-level, cross-sectoral response to improving adolescent mental health (Mongolia)

The Personal Project (Morocco)  

Improving adolescents’ learning in violence-affected areas through blended in-person and online learning opportunities - Communities in Harmony for Children and Adolescents (Mexico)

A community-based approach to support the psychosocial wellbeing of students and teachers (Nicaragua)

Flexible pathways help build the skills and competencies of vulnerable out-of-school adolescents (United Republic of Tanzania)

Climate change and education

Schools as platforms for climate action (Cambodia)

Paving the way for a climate resilient education system (India)

Youth act against climate and air pollution impacts (Mongolia)

Early childhood education

Early environments of care: Strengthening the foundation of children’s development, mental health and wellbeing (Bhutan)

Native language education paves the way for preschool readiness (Bolivia)

Developing cross-sector quality standards for children aged 0-7 (Bulgaria)

Expanding quality early learning through results-based financing (Cambodia)

Harnessing technology to promote communication, education and social inclusion for young children with developmental delays and disabilities (Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia)

Scaling up quality early childhood education in India by investing in ongoing professional development for officials at the state, district and local levels (India)

Strengthening early childhood education in the national education plan and budget in Lesotho to help children succeed in primary and beyond (Lesotho)

Enhancing play-based learning through supportive supervision (Nigeria)

Learning social and emotional skills in pre-school creates brighter futures for children (North Macedonia)

How developing minimum standards increased access to pre-primary education (Rwanda)

Expanding access to quality early childhood education for the most excluded children (Serbia)

Advancing early learning through results-based financing (Sierra Leone)

Lessons learned from designing social impact bonds to expand preschool education (Uzbekistan)

Equity and inclusion

Inclusive education for children with disabilities.

Strengthening policies to mainstream disability inclusion in pre-primary education (Ethiopia)

National early screening and referrals are supporting more young children with disabilities to learn (Jamaica)

Ensuring inclusive education during the pandemic and beyond (Dominican Republic)

Championing inclusive practices for children with disabilities (Ghana)

Accessible digital textbooks for children in Kenya (Kenya)

Planning for inclusion (Nepal)

Harnessing the potential of inclusive digital education to improve learning (Paraguay)

Gender equality in education

Sparking adolescent girls' participation and interest in STEM (Ghana)

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Leveraging collective action and environmental literacy to address complex sustainability challenges

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• Published: 09 August 2022
• Volume 52 , pages 30–44, ( 2023 )

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• Nicole M. Ardoin   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3290-8211 1 ,
• Alison W. Bowers 2 &
• Mele Wheaton 3  

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Developing and enhancing societal capacity to understand, debate elements of, and take actionable steps toward a sustainable future at a scale beyond the individual are critical when addressing sustainability challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, and zoonotic disease. Although mounting evidence exists for how to facilitate individual action to address sustainability challenges, there is less understanding of how to foster collective action in this realm. To support research and practice promoting collective action to address sustainability issues, we define the term “collective environmental literacy” by delineating four key potent aspects: scale, dynamic processes, shared resources, and synergy. Building on existing collective constructs and thought, we highlight areas where researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can support individuals and communities as they come together to identify, develop, and implement solutions to wicked problems. We close by discussing limitations of this work and future directions in studying collective environmental literacy.

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Introduction

For socio-ecologically intertwined issues—such as climate change, land conversion, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, and zoonotic diseases—and their associated multi-decadal timeframes, individual action is necessary, yet not sufficient, for systemic, sustained change (Amel et al. 2017 ; Bodin 2017 ; Niemiec et al. 2020 ; Spitzer and Fraser 2020 ). Instead, collective action, or individuals working together toward a common good, is essential for achieving the scope and scale of solutions to current sustainability challenges. To support communities as they engage in policy and action for socio-environmental change, communicators, land managers, policymakers, and other practitioners need an understanding of how communities coalesce and leverage their shared knowledge, skills, connections, and experiences.

Engagement efforts, such as those grounded in behavior-change approaches or community-based social marketing initiatives, that address socio-environmental issues have often emphasized individuals as the pathway to change. Such efforts address a range of domains including, but not limited to, residential energy use, personal transportation choices, and workplace recycling efforts, often doing so in a stepwise fashion, envisioning each setting or suite of behaviors as discrete spheres of action and influence (Heimlich and Ardoin 2008 ; McKenzie-Mohr 2011 ). In this way, specific actions are treated incrementally and linearly, considering first the individual barriers to be removed and then the motivations to be activated (and, sometimes, sustained; Monroe 2003 ; Gifford et al. 2011 ). Once each behavior is successfully instantiated, the next barrier is then addressed. Proceeding methodically from one action to the next, such initiatives often quite successfully alter a series of actions or group of related behaviors (at least initially) by addressing them incrementally, one at a time (Byerly et al. 2018 ). Following this aspirational logic chain, many resources have been channeled into such programs under the assumption that, by raising awareness and knowledge, such information, communication, and educational outreach efforts will shift attitudes and behaviors to an extent that, ultimately, mass-scale change will follow. (See discussion in Wals et al. 2014 .)

Numerous studies have demonstrated, however, that challenges arise with these stepwise approaches, particularly with regard to their ability to address complex issues and persist over time (Heimlich and Ardoin 2008 ; Wals et al. 2014 ). Such approaches place a tremendous—and unrealistic—burden on individuals, ignoring key aspects not only of behavioral science but also of social science more broadly, including the view that humans exist nested within socio-ecological systems and, thus, are most successful at achieving lasting change when it is meaningful, relevant, and undertaken within a supportive context (Swim et al. 2011 ; Feola 2015 ). Individualized approaches often require multiple steps or nudges (Byerly et al. 2018 ), or ongoing reminders to retain their salience (Stern et al. 2008 ). Because of the emphasis on decontextualized action, such approaches can miss, ignore, obfuscate, or minimize the importance of the bigger picture, which includes the sociocultural, biophysical, and political economic contexts (Ardoin 2006 ; Amel et al. 2017 ). Although the tightly trained focus on small, actionable steps and reliance on individual willpower may help in initially achieving success with initial habit formation (Carden and Wood 2018 ), it becomes questionable in terms of bringing about a wave of transformation on larger scales in the longer term. For those decontextualized actions to persist, they require continued prompting, constancy, and support in the social and biophysical context (Schultz 2014 ; Manfredo et al. 2016 ; Wood and Rünger 2016 ).

Less common in practice are theoretically based initiatives that embrace the holistic nature of the human experience, which occurs within complex systems spanning time and space in a multidimensional, weblike fashion (Bronfenbrenner 1979 ; Rogoff 2003 ; Barron 2006 ; DeCaro and Stokes 2008 ; Gould et al. 2019 ; Hovardas 2020 ). These systems-thinking approaches, while varying across disciplines and epistemological perspectives, envision human experiences, including learning and behavior, as occurring within a milieu that include the social, political, cultural, and historical contexts (Rogoff 2003 ; Roth and Lee 2007 ; Swim et al. 2011 ; Gordon 2019 ). In such a view, people’s everyday practices continuously reflect and grow out of past learning and experiences, not only at the individual, but also at the collective level (Lave 1991 ; Gutiérrez and Rogoff 2003 ; Nasir et al. 2020 ; Ardoin and Heimlich 2021 ). The multidimensional context in which we exist—including the broader temporal and spatial ecosystem—both facilitates and constrains our actions.

Scholars across diverse areas of study discuss the need for and power of collective thought and action, using various conceptual frames, models, and terms, such as collective action, behavior, impact, and intelligence; collaborative governance; communities of practice; crowdsourcing; and social movement theory; among many others (Table 1 ). These scholars acknowledge and explore the influence of our multidimensional context on collective thought and action. In this paper, we explore the elements and processes that constitute collective environmental literacy . We draw on the vast, relevant literature and, in so doing, we attempt to invoke the power of the collective: by reviewing and synthesizing ideas from a variety of fields, we strive to leverage existing constructs and perspectives that explore notions of the “collective” (see Table 1 for a summary of constructs and theories reviewed to develop our working definition of collective environmental literacy). A primary goal of this paper is to dialogue with other researchers and practitioners working in this arena who are eager to uncover and further explore related avenues.

First, we present a formal definition of collective environmental literacy. Next, we briefly review the dominant view of environmental literacy at the individual level and, in support of a collective take on environmental literacy, we examine various collective constructs. We then delve more deeply into the definition of collective environmental literacy by outlining four key aspects: scale, dynamic processes, shared resources, and synergy. We conclude by providing suggestions for future directions in studying collective environmental literacy.

Defining collective environmental literacy

Decades of research in political science, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and the learning sciences, among other fields (Chawla and Cushing 2007 ; Ostrom 2009 ; Sawyer 2014 ; Bamberg et al. 2015 ; Chan 2016 ; Jost et al. 2017 ) repeatedly demonstrates the effectiveness, and indeed necessity of, collective action when addressing problems that are inherently social in nature. Yet theoretical frameworks and empirical documentation emphasize that such collective activities rarely arise spontaneously and, when they do, are a result of preconditions that have sown fertile ground (van Zomeren et al. 2008 ; Duncan 2018 ). Persistent and effective collective action then requires scaffolding in the form of institutional, sociocultural, and political economic structure that provides ongoing support. To facilitate discussions of how to effectively support collective action around sustainability issues, we suggest the concept of “collective environmental literacy.” We conceptualize collective environmental literacy as more than collective action; rather, we suggest that the term encapsulates action along with its various supporting structures and resources. Additionally, we employ the word “literacy” as it connotes learning, intention, and the idea that knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors can be enhanced iteratively over time. By using “literacy,” we strive to highlight the efforts, often unseen, that lead to effective collective action in communities. We draw on scholarship in science and health education, areas that have begun over the past two decades to theorize about related areas of collective science literacy (Roth and Lee 2002 , 2004 ; Lee and Roth 2003 ; Feinstein 2018 ) and health literacy (Freedman et al. 2009 ; Papen 2009 ; Chinn 2011 ; Guzys et al. 2015 ). Although these evolving constructs lack consensus definitions, they illuminate affordances and constraints that exist when conceptualizing collective environmental literacy (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM] 2016 ).

Some of the key necessary—but not sufficient—conditions that facilitate aligned, collective actions include a common body of decision-making information; shared attitudes, values, and beliefs toward a motivating issue or concern; and efficacy skills that facilitate change-making (Sturmer and Simon 2004 ; van Zomeren et al. 2008 ; Jagers et al. 2020 ). In addition, other contextual factors are essential, such as trust, reciprocity, collective efficacy, and communication among group members and societal-level facilitators, such as social norms, institutions, and technology (Bandura 2000 ; Ostrom 2010 ; McAdam and Boudet 2012 ; Jagers et al. 2020 ). Taken together, we term this body of knowledge, dispositions, skills, and the context in which they flourish collective environmental literacy . More formally, we define collective environmental literacy as: a dynamic, synergistic process that occurs as group members develop and leverage shared resources to undertake individual and aggregate actions over time to address sustainability issues within the multi-scalar context of a socio-environmental system (Fig.  1 ).

Key elements of collective environmental literacy

Environmental literacy: Historically individual, increasingly collective

Over the past five decades, the term “environmental literacy” has come into increasingly frequent use. Breaking from the traditional association of “literacy” with reading and writing in formal school contexts, environmental literacy emphasizes associations with character and behavior, often in the form of responsible environmental stewardship (Roth 1992 ). Footnote 1 Such perspectives define the concept as including affective (attitudinal), cognitive (knowledge-based), and behavioral domains, emphasizing that environmental literacy is both a process and outcome that develops, builds, and morphs over time (Hollweg et al. 2011 ; Wheaton et al. 2018 ; Clark et al. 2020 ).

The emphasis on defining, measuring, and developing interventions to bring about environmental literacy has primarily remained at the individual scale, as evidenced by frequent descriptions of an environmentally literate person (Roth 1992 ; Hollweg et al. 2011 among others) rather than community or community member. In most understandings, discussions, and manifestations of environmental literacy, the implicit assumption remains that the unit of action, intervention, and therefore analysis occurs at the individual level. Yet instinctively and perhaps by nature, community members often seek information and, as a result, take action collectively, sharing what some scholars call “the hive mind” or “group mind,” relying on each other for distributed knowledge, expertise, motivation, and support (Surowiecki 2005 ; Sunstein 2008 ; Sloman and Fernbach 2017 ; Paul 2021 ).

As with the proverbial elephant (Saxe, n.d.), each person, household, or neighborhood group may understand or “see” a different part of an issue or challenge, bring a novel understanding to the table, and have a certain perspective or skill to contribute. Although some environmental literacy discussions allude to a collective lens (e.g., Hollweg et al. 2011 ; Ardoin et al. 2013 ; Wheaton et al. 2018 ; Bey et al. 2020 ), defining, developing frameworks, and creating measures to assess the efficacy of such collective-scale sustainability-related endeavors has remained elusive. Footnote 2 Looking to related fields and disciplines—such as ecosystem theory, epidemiology and public health, sociology, network theory, and urban planning, among others—can provide insight, theoretical frames, and empirical examples to assist in such conceptualizations (McAdam and Boudet 2012 ; National Research Council 2015 ) (See Table 1 for an overview of some of the many areas of study that informed our conceptualization of collective environmental literacy).

Seeking the essence of the collective: Looking to and learning from others

The social sciences have long focused on “the kinds of activities engaged in by sizable but loosely organized groups of people” (Turner et al. 2020 , para. 1) and addressed various collective constructs, such as collective behavior, action, intelligence, and memory (Table 1 ). Although related constructs in both the social and natural sciences—such as communities of practice (Wenger and Snyder 2000 ), collaborative governance (Ansell and Gash 2008 ; Emerson et al. 2012 ), and the collaboration–coordination continuum (Sadoff and Grey 2005 ; Prager 2015 ), as well as those from social movement theory and related areas (McAdam and Boudet 2012 ; de Moor and Wahlström 2019 )—lack the word “collective” in name, they too leverage the benefits of collectivity. A central tenet connects all of these areas: powerful processes, actions, and outcomes can arise when individuals coalesce around a common purpose or cause. This notion of a dynamic, potent force transcending the individual to enhance the efficacy of outcomes motivates the application of a collective lens to the environmental literacy concept.

Dating to the 1800s, discussions of collective behavior have explored connections to social order, structures, and norms (Park 1927 ; Smelser 2011 /1962; Turner and Killian 1987 ). Initially, the focus emphasized spontaneous, often violent crowd behaviors, such as riots, mobs, and rebellions. More contemporarily, sociologists, political scientists, and others who study social movements and collective behaviors acknowledge that such phenomena may take many forms, including those occurring in natural ecosystems, such as ant colonies, bird flocks, and even the human brain (Gordon 2019 ). In sociology, collective action represents a paradigm shift highlighting coordinated, purposeful pro-social movements, while de-emphasizing aroused emotions and crowd behavior (Miller 2014 ). In political science, Ostrom’s ( 1990 , 2000 , 2010 ) theory of collective action in the context of the management of shared resources extends the concept’s reach to economics and other fields. In education and the learning sciences, social learning and sociocultural theories tap into the idea of learning as a social-cognitive-cultural endeavor (Vygotsky 1980 ; Lave and Wenger 1991 ; Tudge and Winterhoff 1993 ; Rogoff 2003 ; Reed et al. 2010 ).

Collective action, specifically, and collective constructs, generally, have found their way into the research and practice in the fields of conservation, natural resources, and environmental management. Collective action theory has been applied in a range of settings and scenarios, including agriculture (Mills et al. 2011 ), invasive species management (Marshall et al. 2016 ; Sullivan et al. 2017 ; Lubeck et al. 2019 ; Clarke et al. 2021 ), fire management (Canadas et al. 2016 ; Charnley et al. 2020 ), habitat conservation (Raymond 2006 ; Niemiec et al. 2020 ), and water governance (Lopez-Gunn 2003 ; Baldwin et al. 2018 ), among others. Frameworks and methods that emphasize other collective-related ideas—like collaboration, co-production, and group learning—are also ubiquitous in natural resource and environmental management. These constructs include community-based conservation (DeCaro and Stokes 2008 ; Niemiec et al. 2016 ), community natural resource management (Kellert et al. 2000 ; Dale et al. 2020 ), collaboration/coordination (Sadoff and Grey 2005 ; Prager 2015 ), polycentricity (Galaz et al. 2012 ; Heikkila et al. 2018 ), knowledge co-production (Armitage et al. 2011 ; Singh et al. 2021 ), and social learning (Reed et al. 2010 ; Hovardas 2020 ). Many writings on collective efforts in the social sciences broadly, and applied in the area of environment specifically, provide insights into collective action’s necessary preconditions, which prove invaluable to further defining and later operationalizing collective environmental literacy.

Unpacking the definition of collective environmental literacy: Anchoring principles

As described, we propose the following working definition of collective environmental literacy drawing on our analysis of related literatures and informed by scholarly and professional experience in the sustainability and conservation fields: a dynamic, synergistic process that occurs as group members develop and leverage shared resources to undertake individual and aggregate actions over time to address sustainability issues within the multi-scalar context of a socio-environmental system (Fig.  1 ). This definition centers on four core, intertwined ideas: the scale of the group involved; the dynamic nature of the process; shared resources brought by, available to, and needed by the group; and the synergy that arises from group interaction.

Multi-scalar

When transitioning from the focus on individual to collective actions—and, herein, principles of environmental literacy—the most obvious and primary requisite shift is one of scale. Yet, moving to a collective scale does not mean abandoning action at the individual scale; rather, success at the collective level is intrinsically tied to what occurs at an individual level. Such collective-scale impacts leverage the power of the hive, harnessing people’s willingness, ability, and motivation to take action alongside others, share their ideas and resources to build collective ideas and resources, contribute to making a difference in an impactful way, and participate communally in pro-social activities.

Collective environmental literacy is likely dynamic in its orientation to scale, incorporating place-based notions, such as ecoregional or community-level environmental literacy (with an emphasis on geographic boundaries). On the other hand, it may encapsulate environmental literacy of a group or organization united by a common identity (e.g., organizational membership) or cause (e.g., old-growth forests, coastal protection), rather than solely or even primarily by geography. Although shifting scales can make measuring collective environmental literacy more difficult, dynamic levels may be a benefit when addressing planetary boundary issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and ocean acidification (Galaz et al. 2012 ). Some scholars have called for a polycentric approach to these large-scale issues in response to a perceived failure of global-wide, top-down solutions (Ostrom 2010 , 2012 ; Jordan et al. 2018 ). Conceptualizing and consequently supporting collective environmental literacy at multiple scales can facilitate such desired polycentricity.

Rather than representing a static outcome, environmental literacy is a dynamic process that is fluctuating and complex, reflective of iterative interactions among community members, whose discussions and negotiations reflect the changing context of sustainability issues. Footnote 3 Such open-minded processes allow for, and indeed welcome, adaptation in a way that builds social-ecological resilience (Berkes and Jolly 2002 ; Adger et al. 2005 ; Berkes 2007 ). Additionally, this dynamism allows for collective development and maturation, supporting community growth in collective knowledge, attitudes, skills, and actions via new experiences, interactions, and efforts (Berkman et al. 2010 ). With this mindset, and within a sociocultural perspective, collective environmental literacy evolves through drawing on and contributing to the community’s funds of knowledge (González et al. 2006 ). Movement and actions within and among groups impact collective literacy, as members share knowledge and other resources, shifting individuals and the group in the course of their shared practices (Samerski 2019 ).

In a collective mode, effectiveness is heightened as shared resources are streamlined, waste is minimized, and innovation maximized. Rather than each group member developing individual expertise in every matter of concern, the shared knowledge, skills, and behaviors can be distributed, pursued, and amplified among group members efficiently and effectively, with collective literacy emerging from the process of pooling diverse forms of capital and aggregating resources. This perspective builds on ideas of social capital as a collective good (Ostrom 1990 ; Putnam 2020 ), wherein relationships of trust and reciprocity are both inputs and outcomes (Pretty and Ward 2001 ). The shared resources then catalyze and sustain action as they are reassembled and coalesced at the group level for collective impact.

The pooled resources—likely vast—may include, but are not limited to, physical and human resources, funding, time, energy, and space and place (physical or digital). Shared resources may also include forms of theorized capital, such as intellectual and social (Putnam 2020 ). Also of note is the recognition that these resources extend far beyond information and knowledge. Of particular interest when building collective environmental literacy are resources previously ignored or overlooked by those in power in prior sustainability efforts. For example, collective environmental literacy can draw strength from shared resources unique to the community or even subgroups within the larger community. Discussions of Indigenous knowledge (Gadgil et al. 1993 ) and funds of knowledge (González et al. 2006 ; Cruz et al. 2018 ) suggest critical, shared resources that highlight strengths of an individual community and its members. Another dimension of shared resources relates to the strength of institutional connections, such as the benefits that accrue from leveraging the collective knowledge, expertise, and resources of organizational collaborators working in adjacent areas to further and amplify each other’s impact (Wojcik et al. 2021 ).

Synergistic

Finally, given the inherent complexities related to defining, deploying, implementing, and measuring these dynamic, at-times ephemeral processes, resources, and outcomes at a collective scale, working in such a manner must be clearly advantageous to pressing sustainability issues at hand. Numerous related constructs and approaches from a range of fields emphasize the benefits of diverse collaboration to collective thought and action, including improved solutions, more effective and fair processes, and more socioculturally just outcomes (Klein 1990 ; Jörg 2011 ; Wenger and Snyder 2000 ; Djenontin and Meadow 2018 ). These benefits go beyond efficient aggregation and distribution of resources, invoking an almost magical quality that defines synergy, resulting in robust processes and outcomes that are more than the sum of the parts.

This synergy relies on the diversity of a group across various dimensions, bringing power, strength, and insight to a decision-making process (Bear and Woolley 2011 ; Curşeu and Pluut 2013 ; Freeman and Huang 2015 ; Lu et al. 2017 ; Bendor and Page 2019 ). Individuals are limited not only to singular knowledge-perspectives and skillsets, but also to their own experiences, which influence their self-affirming viewpoints and tendencies to seek out confirmatory information for existing beliefs (Kahan et al. 2011 ). Although the coming together of those from different racial, cultural, social, and economic backgrounds facilitates a collective literacy process that draws on a wider range of resources and equips a gestalt, it also sets up the need to consider issues of power, privilege, voice, and representation (Bäckstrand 2006 ) and the role of social capital, leading to questions related to trust and reciprocity in effective collectives (Pretty and Ward 2001 ; Folke et al. 2005 ).

Leveraging the ‘Hive’: Proceeding with collective environmental literacy

This paper presents one conceptualization of collective environmental literacy, with the understanding that numerous ways exist to envision its definition, formation, deployment, and measurement. Characterized by a collective effort, such literacies at scale offer a way to imagine, measure, and support the synergy that occurs when the emphasis moves from an individual to a larger whole. By expanding the scale and focusing on shared responsibility among actors at the systems level, opportunities arise for inspiring and enabling a broader contribution to a sustainable future. These evolving notions serve to invite ongoing conversation, both in research and practice, about how to enact our collective responsibility toward, as well as vision of, a thriving future.

Emerging from the many discussions of shared and collaborative efforts to address socio-environmental issues, our conceptualization of collective environmental literacy is a first step toward supporting communities as they work to identify, address, and solve sustainability problems. We urge continued discussions on this topic, with the goal of understanding the concept of collective environmental literacy, how to measure it, and the implications of this work for practitioners. The conceptual roots of collective environmental literacy reach into countless fields of study and, as such, a transdisciplinary approach, which includes an eye toward practice, is necessary to fully capture and maximize the tremendous amount of knowledge, wisdom, and experience around this topic. Specifically, next steps to evolve the concept include engaging sustainability researchers and practitioners in discussions of the saliency of the presented definition of collective environmental literacy. These discussions include verifying the completeness of the definition and ensuring a thorough review of relevant research: Are parts of the definition missing or unclear? What are the “blank, blind, bald, and bright spots” in the literature (Reid 2019 p. 158)? Additionally, recognizing and leveraging literacy at a collective scale most certainly is not unique to environmental work, nor is adopting literacy-related language to conceptualize and measure process outcomes, although the former has consistently proven more challenging. Moreover, although we (the authors) appreciate the connotations and structures gained by using a literacy framework, we struggle with whether “environmental literacy” is the most appropriate and useful term for the conceptualizations as described herein; we, thus, welcome lively discussions about the need for new terminology.

Even at this early stage of conceptualization, this work has implications for practitioners. For scientists, communicators, policymakers, land managers, and other professionals desiring to work with communities to address sustainability issues, a primary take-away message concerns the holistic nature of what is needed for effective collective action in the environmental realm. Many previous efforts have focused on conveying information and, while a lack of knowledge and awareness may be a barrier to action in some cases, the need for a more holistic lens is increasingly clear. This move beyond an individually focused, information-deficit model is essential for effective impact (Bolderdijk et al. 2013 ; van der Linden 2014 ; Geiger et al. 2019 ). The concept of collective environmental literacy suggests a role for developing shared resources that can foster effective collective action. When working with communities, a critical early step includes some form of needs assessment—a systematic, in-depth process that allows for meaningfully gauging gaps in shared resources required to tackle sustainability issues (Braus 2011). Following this initial, evaluative step, an understanding of the components of collective environmental literacy, as outlined in this paper, can be used to guide the development of interventions to support communities in their efforts to address those issues.

Growing discussion of collective literacy constructs, and related areas, suggests researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working in pro-social areas recognize and value collective efforts, despite the need for clearer definitions and effective measures. This definitional and measurement work, in both research and practice, is not easy. The ever-changing, dynamic contexts in which collective environmental literacy exists make defining the concept a moving target, compounded by a need to draw upon work in countless, often distinct academic fields of study. Furthermore, the hard-to-see, inner workings of collective constructs make measurement difficult. Yet, the “power of the hive” is intriguing, as the synergism that arises from communities working in an aligned manner toward a unified vision suggests a potency and wave of motivated action essential to coalescing and leveraging individual goodwill, harnessing its power and potential toward effective sustainability solutions.

See Stables and Bishop’s ( 2001 ) idea of defining environmental literacy by viewing the environment as “text.”

The climate change education literature also includes a nascent, but growing, discussion of collective-lens thinking and literacy. See, for example, Waldron et al. ( 2019 ), Mochizuki and Bryan ( 2015 ), and Kopnina ( 2016 ).

This conceptualization is similar to how some scholars describe collective health literacy (Berkman et al., 2010 ; Mårtensson and Hensing, 2012 ).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Maria DiGiano, Anna Lee, and Becca Shareff for their feedback and contributions to early drafts of this paper. We appreciate the research and writing assistance supporting this paper provided by various members of the Stanford Social Ecology Lab, especially: Brennecke Gale, Pari Ghorbani, Regina Kong, Naomi Ray, and Austin Stack.

This work was supported by a grant from the Pisces Foundation.

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Ardoin, N.M., Bowers, A.W. & Wheaton, M. Leveraging collective action and environmental literacy to address complex sustainability challenges. Ambio 52 , 30–44 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01764-6

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High school students, frustrated by lack of climate education, press for change

Youth activists pushing for more climate education in Minnesota schools say working with peers to draft legislation gives them hope for a future under threat. (AP Video: Mark Vancleave)

B Rosas, left, Lucia Everist, center, and Libby Kramer, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

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Libby Kramer, left, Lucia Everist, center, and B Rosas, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Lucia Everist, of Climate Generation, center, speaks to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

FILE - Water floods a damaged trailer park in Fort Myers, Fla., Oct. 1, 2022, after Hurricane Ian passed by the area. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

Minnesota Sen. Nicole Mitchell, left, sits with members of Climate Generation, from second left, B Rosas, Lucia Everist, Libby Kramer and Minnesota Rep. Larry Kraft, right, as they speak the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Libby Kramer, of Climate Generation, right, speaks to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

B Rosas, back left, Lucia Everist, back center, and Libby Kramer, back right, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Several dozen young people wearing light blue T-shirts imprinted with #teachclimate filled a hearing room in the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul in late February. It was a cold and windy day, in contrast to the state’s nearly snowless, warm winter.

The high school and college students and other advocates, part of group Climate Generation, called on the Minnesota Youth Council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change .

Ethan Vue, who grew up with droughts and extreme temperatures in California, now lives in Minnesota and is a high school senior pushing for the bill.

“I just remember seeing my classmates always sweating, and they’d even drench themselves in water from the water fountains,” Vue said in a phone interview, noting climate change is making heat waves longer and hotter, but they didn’t learn about that in school.

“The topic is brushed on. If anything, we just learn about, there’s global warming, the planet’s warming up.”

Libby Kramer, left, Lucia Everist, center, and B Rosas, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

In places that teach to standards formulated by the National Science Teachers Association, state governments and other organizations, many kids learn about air quality, ecosystems, biodiversity and land and water in Earth and environmental science classes.

But students and advocates say that is insufficient. They are demanding districts, boards and state lawmakers require more teaching about the planet’s warming and would like it woven into more subjects.

Some states and school districts have moved in the opposite direction. In Texas , the board of education turned down books with climate information. In Florida, school materials deny climate change .

“Someone could theoretically go through middle school and high school without really ever acknowledging the climate crisis,” said Jacob Friedman, a high school senior in Florida who hasn’t learned about climate except for in elective classes. “Or even acknowledging that there is an issue of global warming.”

That’s bizarre to Friedman, who experienced firsthand when Hurricane Ian closed nearby schools and submerged homes in 2022.

A study conducted after the storm found that climate change added at least 10% more rain to Hurricane Ian. Experts also say hurricanes are intensifying faster because of the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are collecting heat and warming the oceans.

“What an unfair reality to have a young person graduate from high school,” said Leah Qusba, executive director of nonprofit Action for the Climate Emergency, “without knowing about the biggest existential threat that they’re going to face in their lifetime.”

Some places are adding more instruction on the subject. In 2020, New Jersey required teaching climate change at all grade levels. Connecticut followed, then California. More than two dozen new measures across 10 states were introduced last year, according to the National Center for Science Education.

Libby Kramer, of Climate Generation, right, speaks to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Where some proposals require teaching the basic science and human causes of climate change , the Minnesota bill goes further, requiring state officials to guide schools on teaching climate justice, including the idea that the changes hit disadvantaged communities harder .

Some legislators say they’ve heard from school administrators and teachers who say that goes too far.

“What was said to me is: ‘Why are we pushing a political perspective, a political agenda?’” Minnesota Rep. Ben Bakeberg, a Republican, said during a House Education Policy Committee hearing in March 2023. “That’s a reality.”

The bill didn’t advance in the 2023 session. Now it hasn’t this year either. Supporters say they will try again next year.

Aware of such opposition, some students interested in climate opt to campaign at their schools rather than through the legislative process.

Three years ago, floods destroyed Ariela Lara’s mom’s village in Oaxaca, Mexico, while they were visiting. Then Lara came home to California and was hit by smoke-filled skies caused by wildfires that pushed thousands to evacuate or be stuck inside for weeks.

Yet despite what she was seeing, Lara felt in school she was only taught about recycling and carbon footprints, a measure of a person’s personal greenhouse gas emissions.

So she went to the board of education.

“I had to really think about how I could go to the people in power to really rewrite the curriculum we were learning,” Lara said. “It would get so tiresome because for me, I was the one that was really trying to enforce it.”

By the time her school offered Advanced Placement Environmental Science, Lara was too senior to enroll in it. AP Enviro does cover climate change , according to the College Board, but it’s also more broad.

B Rosas, back left, Lucia Everist, back center, and Libby Kramer, back right, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

When targeted efforts don’t work, some students feel they’re on their own.

For high school junior Siyeon Joo, climate education seems like a no-brainer where she lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, which was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and has been affected by several other intense storms and heat waves.

But Joo wasn’t exposed to climate change at her public middle school and an educator there once told her it wasn’t real.

“I remember sitting in that classroom,” the now-16-year-old said, “being really angry that that was the system that was being forced upon me at the time.”

It took enrolling in a private school for Joo to learn about these topics. Many students don’t have that option.

Experts say climate material could be worked into lessons without burdening schools or putting the onus on students. But much like with legislation, that will take time students say they don’t have.

“I was part of these communities that were really just affirming how much is at stake if we don’t take action,” said Lara, the student in California, recalling how important to her it would have been to receive education about her experiences. “You should be able to go to school and learn about the gravity which the climate crisis is at.”

Alexa St. John reported from Detroit and Doug Glass reported from St. Paul, Minn.

Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn . Reach her at [email protected] .

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

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Climate and health education: A critical review at one medical school

Lucy greenwald.

1 Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States

Olivia Blanchard

Colleen hayden.

2 The Leni and Peter W. May Department of Medical Education, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States

Perry Sheffield

3 Departments of Environmental Medicine, Public Health, and Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States

Associated Data

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Introduction

As medical schools continue to improve and refine their undergraduate curricula, they are also redefining the roadmap for preparing future generations of physicians. Climate change is a critical topic to integrate into medical education. This period of change for undergraduate medical education coincides with a surge in interest and design efforts for climate and health curricula in health professional education, but this nascent field has yet to be solidly institutionalized. To continue to grow the number of medical students who achieve competency in the effects of climate change on individual health and the health of the planet during their training, we must examine what has worked to date and continue to shift our approach as curricular changes are implemented for feasibility and relevancy.

Objective and methods

In the present study, we assessed the “climate and health” content at one northeastern U.S. medical school that is undergoing an overhaul of their entire curriculum to explore strategies to deliver more robust climate health education in the context of the educational redesign. We conducted 1) a retrospective review of the now four-year-old initiative to investigate the sustainability of the original content, and 2) semi-structured interviews with lecturers, course directors, and medical education coordinators involved in implementation, and with faculty tasked with developing the upcoming curricular redesign.

Results and discussion

Of the original implementation plan, the content was still present in nine of the 14 lectures. Themes determined from our conversations with involved faculty included the need for 1) a shared vision throughout the content arc, 2) further professional development for faculty, and 3) involvement of summative assessment for students and the content itself to ensure longevity. The interviews also highlighted the importance of developing climate-specific resources that fit within the school's new curricular priorities. This critical review can serve as a case study in curriculum to inform other schools undergoing similar changes.

1. Introduction

The overarching objective of undergraduate medical education curricula is to provide students with the scientific knowledge and practical skills to be accomplished and responsible physicians ( 1 ). Historically, medical school curricula undergo frequent content, format, and faculty changes as well as periodic large scale reorganization ( 2 ), which is currently happening across the country ( 3 ). Prominent trends throughout the present curricular developments include condensing the early coursework and introducing more content on social science and policy ( 4 ) and structural determinants of health ( 5 , 6 ). The driving forces for these changes include Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), and United States Medical Licensing Evaluation (USMLE) pressures and student demand ( 7 – 13 ).

Climate change is one of the large societal issues being integrated into some medical school curricula. Climate change has been on the radar of the general public for years but has only slowly gained traction as a political, social, and medical crisis. The effects of climate change on health come from both the indirect impacts of exacerbating inequities in SDOH, with the earliest and most prominent effects of climate change affecting those in low income and disadvantaged communities ( 14 ), and the direct impacts of heat, extreme weather events, pollution, wildfires, and other phenomena. Infants and young children, older adults, and people with disabilities are also among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A breadth of research shows the direct clinical impacts of climate change in all medical disciplines [cardiac health, ( 15 ); pulmonary health, ( 16 ); renal health, ( 17 ); infectious disease, ( 18 , 19 ); psychiatry, ( 20 ); emergency medicine, ( 21 ); pediatrics, ( 22 , 23 ); gynecology, ( 24 )], but this research has not translated to inclusion into medical school curricula at the same rate. In a survey conducted by the International Federation of Medical Students associations, only 15% of the 2,817 medical schools included climate change in their curricula ( 25 ). In recent years, groups within medical schools have worked to build and adapt curricular initiatives that reflect the nature of climate change as a societal issue and a direct threat to health. Various methods for implementation have been adapted: Emory University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) have adopted a disseminated design with climate change and health content spread throughout pre-clerkship courses and small group discussions ( 26 ), Queen's University Belfast, Stanford, and UC-Berkeley UCSF Joint Medical Program have an elective-based approach, and Georgetown School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School offer clinical scenario exercises to expose students to the practical applications of climate change ( 27 ). Because climate change results in pervasive, universal, and ever worsening health problems, it remains crucial to educate the students who will be responsible for human health on its impacts.

We are in a critical period for understanding curricular initiatives in climate change and health to ensure their sustainability. The ISMMS MD program is undergoing a curricular reform across all facets of the educational program. The climate change curriculum infusion project (CCCIP) is the initiative that has coordinated the introduction of climate change content at ISMMS since 2018. The student-led, faculty supported group responsible for the inception of the project designed stand-alone slides, each with a recognizable banner ( Figure 1 ), to be incorporated in 14 lectures across six courses in the first 2 years of the pre-clerkship curriculum ( 26 ). Two rounds of student feedback ( n = 74) of the CCCIP concluded that the content was appropriate in the courses (88%) and important to their medical education (83%). The feedback also indicated that students did not remember the content well (78%) and that the climate-related content at ISMMS did not match their expectations [62%; ( 26 )].

The CCCIP banner that appeared on each of the pre-prepared slides ( 26 ).

The goal of the present study is to explore a nationally relevant case study of the ISMMS' climate change content as it relates to a drastic curricular redesign. We aim to assess the CCCIP implementation from the perspective of the ISMMS faculty, understand the challenges to implementing the content as presented, and assess ways to improve the success and sustainability of the information in the new conceptual framework.

2.1. Retrospective review of CCCIP

2.1.1. study design and data collection.

The first component of this study was a retrospective review of CCCIP content continuity. We identified the lectures where CCCIP content was originally accepted by course directors and lecturers by following the CCCIP records ( 26 ) from the inception of the program. Medical administrators at ISMMS granted us access to the Blackboard course websites for all courses from the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 academic years identified to have lectures with CCCIP material. With the timetabled lectures from 2018 as a guide, these courses were systematically reviewed to identify where CCCIP content was still being used.

2.1.2. Data analysis

Lectures where we found slides with the CCCIP banner were counted as lectures where the content was still present. The data for both years of content were recorded and helped to inform the second component of the study.

2.2. Assessment of faculty experience

2.2.1. study design and data collection.

The second component of the study aimed to gather faculty feedback on the CCCIP. To better understand faculty experience with CCCIP implementation, a mixed methods interview-based exploratory study was designed. The study was deemed exempt by the Mount Sinai Institutional Review Board (IRB). Inclusion criteria were based on participation in the original CCCIP. Eligible faculty members included lecturers who were tasked with delivering CCCIP content, course directors for courses where CCCIP content was included, and medical education leadership. Two separate semi-structured interview guides were created, one for lecturers and course directors directly involved in the CCCIP and one for medical education faculty who had knowledge of the aims of the content implementation and who are involved in the current curriculum redesign. The guides were designed by consulting studies with similar lenses of curriculum implementation ( 10 , 28 – 30 ) and by reviewing literature on qualitative research methods ( 31 ).

Eligible faculty members (nine lecturers, of whom five are also course directors, and six leaders in medical education) were emailed with information about the study, the research information sheet, and a request to schedule a 30-min interview. Once a time slot was selected, a calendar invitation was sent to the faculty member with a HIPAA-compliant videoconference Zoom link. Zoom sessions were run by one interview lead and notes were taken concurrently by another researcher. After obtaining consent, each session was recorded for note-taking purposes. Interview questions included three introductory questions related to the interviewee's field of practice, ten baseline questions regarding lecture content and delivery for lecturers and course directors, and seven baseline questions regarding curriculum design and sustainability for medical education faculty and those involved in the curricular redesign team ( Table 1 ). Following the conclusion of the interviews, the recordings were reviewed by the research lead to supplement the notes, as needed. Once the final data were organized, recordings were permanently discarded and data were stripped of all identifiers.

Closed and open interview questions for the semi-structured interviews for the climate content evaluation.

2.2.2. Data analysis

Interviews were reviewed and characterized throughout data collection. Qualitative interview data were coded by a single coder using an inductive approach ( 32 ). During analysis of individual interview transcripts, ideas in each interview were noted and subsequently added to a separate spreadsheet. The same spreadsheet was used to organize ideas from every interview and served as an initial code-book. Analyses were checked by a second, independent coder. The additional coder chose three interviews to code at random, after which the two coders reviewed the independently generated codes for consistency. Once all interviews were coded, results were refined and synthesized into broader thematic determinations. Quantitative, Likert-style questions were assessed using parametric summary statistics.

3.1. Retrospective review of CCCIP content

In the CCCIP, content was initially (2018) planned for a total of 14 lectures across 6 courses ( 26 ). In the retrospective review of these lectures from 2020 to 2022, we found that the content was present in nine lectures (64%) across five courses ( Table 2 ). The number and content of CCCIP lecture slides used in each lecture changed from year to year depending on lecturer preference. Interviews with course faculty revealed that CCCIP content was implemented in one lecture not originally included (Alzheimer's disease, Brain and Behavior Course ). Content that was originally planned for another lecture (asthma, Pulmonary Pathophysiology course ) was used initially, but was removed prior to the 2020–2021 academic year and therefore not included in this review.

Results of the retrospective (2020–2022) review of CCCIP inclusion, presented in chronological order of content delivery through the 2 years of the pre-clerkship curriculum.

3.2. Assessment of faculty experience

Interviews were conducted with seven of the nine recruited lecturers (including four of the five course directors) and with two of the six faculty members in medical education leadership. Faculty members were given unique identifiers A-I. The semi-structured interviews revealed several common ideas that were then organized into three major thematic umbrellas with regard to ensuring sustainable content development: ( 1 ) the necessity of centralization and a shared vision; ( 2 ) adequate professional development; and ( 3 ) assessment of student learning and of the content itself ( Table 3 ). Coding comparisons revealed high inter-rater reliability. Barriers to general curriculum development and re-design had a high degree of consistency with those felt by the faculty involved in the CCCIP.

Codebook from faculty interviews with lecturers and course directors.

3.2.1. Shared vision

The most commonly cited challenge was the lack of centralization in terms of the organization of the content arc and access of the contributors and participants to the full plan. When the CCCIP began, permission was granted from course directors to include the slides into their course. Slides were given to individual lecturers to integrate into their existing content, but participants noted a lack of knowledge of the “bigger picture.” Several faculty expressed the need for more visible leadership as well as an overt curricular map to provide context and to motivate them to present the material in a meaningful way. For example, one lecturer/course director (study participant C) noted that they “never heard if the content was implemented in other courses” and another lecturer (study participant E) thought that knowing what had been taught so far would make it easier to contextualize their piece of the curricular thread in relation to what had been taught about the topic in previous courses.

Themes discerned from conversations with faculty specifically involved in the upcoming curriculum redesign echoed similar themes to the lecturers and course directors. They further highlighted the need for comprehensive resources for proposed curriculum enhancements, with designs that involve a full educational arc:

“It's so critical that we have a curriculum map and an inventory of where [the content] is taught and where it is assessed. It needs to be big picture: What's the arc? Where do we start from? And Where are we going?…Do folks have learning objectives throughout? Do we have assessments? Are there questions on any exams related to this? This is a very important database of information to have as you think through the curriculum going forward… Where is it actually meaningful?... It really is figuring out how do we ensure the long term retention of it for the students.” - Medical education leadership (study participant I).

3.2.2. Faculty development

All but one of the interviewed faculty members agreed that climate change is important in their field, and in medicine in general (average = 3.75 on 5-point Likert scale; SD = 1.0206, median = 3.75). Reasons for this importance ranged from direct impacts on patient health, such as weather events impacting the ability of patients to receive care, to indirect impacts involving SDOH, with one lecturer/course director (study participant A) noting “people's social circumstances greatly affect whether they need intensive care.” Those that described lower degrees of importance of climate change in their field noted that, to their knowledge, the question of its impact had not yet been addressed. Lecturers had various reasons for agreeing to include information about climate change and health in their material. Lecturers with connections to climate change outside of the CCCIP generally felt more comfort in developing the material. Some faculty had a personal interest in climate change: one lecturer/course director (study participant F) cited family members who work directly in the field and act as climate change activists while another lecturer (study participant B) cited personal fears about the climate crisis outside of their occupation. Other faculty became invested in the health impacts of climate change through seeing it in their work. For example, one lecturer explained

“I think …in my education [climate change] didn't play any role, so I think it was really when I was working on the ground and I was seeing the effect…I was seeing malaria epidemics were happening where, according to the books, they shouldn't have happened…[Climate change became important] when I really had contact with it and really saw the consequences.” Lecturer (study participant D).

The role of students came up as an important topic throughout the interviews. One lecturer/course director (study participant C) noted that students in this generation “are more attuned to and more concerned with these issues,” making climate change a comfortable and important topic to bring into lectures. The idea of students as drivers of content development was consistent throughout almost every interview. Many faculty cited the CCCIP initiative as essential in reminding faculty that these topics are important. One lecturer (study participant D) stated that “what you are doing is like lobbying, you just have to continue lobbying” and another lecturer (study participant B) noted that being brought the material by the research group was the first time they had thought about climate change as it relates to their field. Interviewees also identified buy-in from medical education faculty as an essential driver for content development and reform. Some faculty participants explained that support from higher level administrators would make them feel that the new content is necessary, that there is a network of support, and that their labor involved in curricular development is valued.

Comfort and expertise with climate change and health was variable across the lecturers (average = 3.50 on 5-point Likert scale; SD = 1.643, median = 4.0). Limited faculty development and time were noted as a substantial challenge for those who were less comfortable with the topic itself, noting a lack of “bandwidth in the midst of the course to incorporate new material” and that there was “no support, no one in charge was giving a presentation” (lecturer, study participant E) during the CCCIP. Expansion of faculty development around climate change and SDOH through experiences such as an educational development session, written faculty guide, annual event with expert speakers, or a learning module for faculty were cited as ways to improve faculty comfort.

The challenge of faculty expertise on climate change was also identified as a factor in feedback on the efficacy of the pre-made CCCIP slides. While about half of faculty members felt that the CCCIP information fit “very well” into their existing course material, others noted that the slides felt “a little disjointed” or “like a post-script for the lecture rather than something that nicely tied it together” (lecturer/course director, study participant G). Positive attributes of the slides themselves included the recognizability of the banner ( Figure 1 ) and the clarity of having info-graphic style slides. Faculty members had differing opinions about whether having the pre-made slides was helpful in incorporating the new information, or if providing the slides was a barrier to feeling ownership and confidence in the material. One lecturer (study participant E) believed that the pre-made slides were helpful noting that if we “had not given [them] the slides, [they] probably would not have included it” but that the ease of having slides allowed them to avoid exploring the topic further and including the concept in their own words, making the slide more of a “shortsighted solution.” Overall, faculty motivation appears to be heterogeneous with lack of personal education as a substantial barrier to successful and motivated implementation.

3.2.3. Assessment

Assessment is a reflection of both student learning, in the form of summative assessment, and of the content implementation, in the form of institutional or accreditation requirements. Having these quantifiable assessments increases the pressure on institutions to include curricular topics and increases the pressure on students to internalize the content. The need for these outcomes in the success of any curriculum is clear when considering the frequently cited challenge of time and space constraints in medical education. One lecturer (study participant D) explained this challenge, saying “I think the problem is that medicine is always growing, but the time we have face to face with students never grows.” Faculty on the medical education leadership team (study participant H) echoed this idea with the notion that “there are many topics that people are passionate about, but [when something is added] something has to come out.” The upcoming curriculum reform plan for ISMMS includes changes to the mode of instruction, moving away from lecture-based learning toward more engaged learning modalities, which anticipates all courses having to confront the challenge of curricular space and prioritization:

“Everybody is going to have to pull out what's been most critical… we are going to have to figure out how we fit those into small group discussions and case-based discussions…[we have to figure out if there] is stuff with climate change that is …self-taught that we can still require [and] assess, but …in a way where the students are not going to gloss over it.” - Medical education leadership (study participant I).

Guidelines in the form of institutional requirements and summative assessment shape what continues to be included in medical education. None of the CCCIP information was included in course assessments to date. Several faculty members noted lack of assessment both at the school and the USMLE level as barriers to advocating for further development in this content area. Most faculty agreed that assessment is an important tool for learning. One lecturer/course director (study participant C) stated, “assessments should reflect what we think is most important for students to learn and to understand and I think that if we are not assessing that content that that's sending a message that it is maybe not that important.” In terms of a message of importance coming from governing bodies of medical education, faculty cited the student and educator fixation on the NBME boards to dictate was content is emphasized:

“There's so much major biomedical content that you have to have to get you ready for step 1 and the clinicals…a lot of this other [material]... the touchy-feely side of medicine…gets lost a bit.” - Medical education leadership (study participant I). “we're not going to get any points for it…for accreditation because we're not assessing it. We're just saying we did something, but we really didn't do it. We didn't go through it in a meaningful way.” - Medical education leadership (study participant I).

4. Discussion

The results of the retrospective review portion of this study show the longevity of the prior climate content integration at ISMMS, and the qualitative interview portion of this study serves to help cultivate an understanding of the reasons behind its mixed successes and failures. A majority of the CCCIP content that was created in 2018 was carried through to the 2021–2022 curriculum, but not all of it. This is consistent with the changing nature of curriculum and educational priorities ( 2 ). Two interesting changes to the pre-made CCCIP content noted in the interviews were 1) the removal from one lecture after having been in place the years prior, and 2) the addition of content to a lecture where it was not originally planned to be. First considerations of the removal of the content from a lecture may suggest that the content was deemed unimportant, but based on our conversations with lecturers, it may more likely reflect discomfort with the material and curricular time constraints. In a survey of 84 international health professional schools and programs, 71% of respondents indicated that they encountered challenges to instituting climate change content in their curriculum, with 24% indicating lack of teaching materials and expertise and 29% indicating no available space in the core curriculum, similar to challenges identified in our conversations ( 30 ). On the other hand, addition of climate related content into an unplanned lecture may point to a sustainable impact of the CCCIP initiative on the faculty themselves. Teaching and learning are often thought to be intertwined processes that happen simultaneously and symbiotically ( 33 ). Teaching the CCCIP material may in turn serve to make the lecturer more aware and interested in the topic. This is consistent with the idea that the CCCIP initiative and the student involvement in the curriculum helped to drive content implementation that was present across multiple interviews. The idea of student lead initiatives as drivers of change in medical education is present both in institutions initiating climate change education ( 34 – 36 ) and across additional domains of educational reform, outreach services, and advocacy groups as students engage in extracurricular activities and research throughout their medical education ( 8 , 37 , 38 ). Student-faculty partnerships are integral to the development and sustainability of curricular changes and accountability in the health sector ( 36 ). While students may be able to take on some of the required work in facilitating learning, including creating learning materials, teaching their peers, and leading faculty development, the investment of faculty support, clinical expertise, and status in the institution is continuously necessary for the longevity of the initiative ( 35 ). When medical education and faculty embrace students as partners, they are able to become more invested in shaping their own education.

Active collaborations to organize student and faculty advocacy efforts can aid in the creation and development of future curricula at ISMMS and other institutions. International organizations (International Medical Education Collaboration on Climate and Sustainability, IMECCS; and the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education, GCCHE), international initiatives (Planetary Health Report Card, PHRC; and the Association of Medical Education in Europe's Consensus Statement, AMEE), and national student networks (Medical Students for a Sustainable Future, MS4SF) offer extensive and overlapping resources for guidance on advocating for inclusion of content, content development, and an in-depth content repository of content (summarized in Figure 2 ).

A guide for the various available resources for climate change content development and implementation [graphic created by Lucy Greenwald with information sourced from https://phreportcard.org/ , https://ms4sf.org/ , https://www.imeccs.org/ , https://climatehealthed.org/ , and ( 39 )].

Three key barriers to successful and sustainable content integration in the CCCIP arose from conversations with faculty: Lack of a shared vision for the content arc, inadequate faculty development, and failure to incorporate assessment. These essential elements of content design were echoed by the medical education faculty preparing to implement the new curriculum. The overall challenges faced by the ISMMS faculty in implementing the CCCIP curriculum match those seen in other institutions ( 30 ). When looking across institutions, it is clear that the efforts to improve an institution's climate literacy is never without its challenges. The PHRC provides an interesting look into the relative efficacy of climate curricula and additional aspects of sustainability and climate consciousness at different institutions. The results of the first year (2019–2020) of the PHRC indicated that zero out of the 13 participating institutions received an “A” grade (80% of possible points) and the results of the second year (2020–2021) indicated that only one institution, Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA) out of 62 medical schools in five countries received an “A-” ( 40 ). These results indicate that significant improvement is still needed across all participating institutions ( 41 ).

Overall, we found that a transparent and intentional approach to implementation involving accessible content mapping, faculty education, and formal assessment of related content may help to improve the overall knowledge base of the institution and its students. These findings are consistent with the some of the important points in the six-step approach to curriculum development in medical education. The six-steps include “performing a needs assessment, determining and prioritizing content, writing goals and objectives, selecting teaching/educational strategies, implementation of the curriculum, and evaluation and application of lessons learned” ( 42 , 43 ). Without clear content mapping with a shared vision, faculty development, and formal assessment, these steps cannot be met.

Following the upcoming shift away from primarily lecture-based education, aspects of how content is best delivered at ISMMS, including climate change and health education, may need to be re-thought. As this research explores the CCCIP at ISMMS as it relates to the imminent curricular redesign, it can have national relevance as a case study for other medical schools. Institutions aiming to integrate climate and health education, and advocacy groups with hopes of empowering their institutions to do so, must be able to develop and promote these content initiatives in the context of wider curriculum development.

LCME guidelines create unique opportunities for climate change and other topics surrounding SDOH to provide enhancement of real-world applications of the scientific basis of medical education ( 13 ). With these guidelines, there has been a growing interest in teaching SDOH in medical education ( 44 ), a change that can both serve to highlight the importance of these issues in health and health inequity, and help to fulfill the accreditation requirements of the institution. While climate change impacts and exacerbates existing inequities of SDOH ( What is Climate Change? ), the reality of climate change as a present and imminent threat to the health and lives of the population may be better stressed by separating it from SDOH and focusing on ecologic determinants of health, such as air and ocean pollution, global warming, and declining biodiversity ( 45 ). This approach is also more holistic in examining the impact of the health of the planet on human and community wellbeing at a systems level, including more comprehensive factors, such as “ecological, social, cultural, and intergenerational determinants of health” and encouraging participation of community, policy, and indigenous programs outside of the health sector to inform perspectives ( 45 ). As the emphasis of medical curricula shifts to highlight the patient in context, individuals' social and physical environments play an even larger role in health ( 46 ).

At ISMMS, the LCME guided “societal problems” will be integrated in six threads throughout the curricular arc. These threads have already been chosen as an extension of the named priorities of the institution: Scholarly Discovery, Advocacy, Social Justice and Anti-Oppression, Healthcare Delivery Science, Medical Decision-Making, and Leadership and Professional Identity Formation. Climate change is included under the umbrella of “Advocacy, Social Justice, and Anti-Oppression.” Some possibilities for the future of the CCCIP include a pre-clerkship informal extra-curricular elective, a clerkship elective course, generating fully developed problem-based learning cases to be integrated in pre-curriculum courses, and continued advocacy for climate literacy of all faculty at the institution, integrating faculty development across subspecialties.

4.1. Limitations

The major limitation of this study was that we reviewed only one medical school's climate content. Additionally, we only reviewed the content from faculty involved in the first 2 years of the pre-clinical curriculum. Additional institutions and inclusion of faculty with greater diversity of educator experiences of climate content would be needed to make the conclusions generalizable to the public. Nevertheless, we were able to have meaningful conversations with faculty at each level of leadership in the curriculum that provided valuable information to consider.

5. Conclusions

From the retrospective review and qualitative interviews with faculty involved with delivering climate change content, we identified key steps that are needed to implement successful and sustainable curricula. It is necessary to stay active and continue to build fully realized curricula with the help of available resources, especially in the current period of reviewing and revitalizing medical education. Advocates must engage medical education deans and faculty to assure that there is higher-level understanding of the importance of this education. Further advocacy must extend beyond the institutional level to national networks of decision makers in medical education standards (USMLE, LCME, and AAMC). Climate and health literacy must be on the radar of all those with the power to make curricular decisions for the benefit of all current and future physicians and patients. Providers have direct access to communities, and therefore unique opportunities to recognize climate change and prepare patients for its effects. As respected members of society who are first-hand witnesses to the effects of the crisis, physicians must take active roles in preventing its worst effects by advocating for more robust climate action—specifically reducing healthcare sector carbon emissions and building climate resilient health systems. As a society we have begun to become numb to the devastating effects of catastrophes that we encounter every day ( 47 ). We must remember that climate change is here, it is impacting our health, and it is accelerating.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

Studies involving human participants are reviewed and approved by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai IRB. This study was reviewed by the IRB and deemed exempt. The participants were provided the study information and gave verbal consent prior to the start of the interviews.

Author contributions

LG, OB, and PS conceived of the research idea and participated in data collection and analysis. LG wrote the manuscript with supervision from PS and editing from OB. CH provided expertise in LCME and accreditation requirements and reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and helped shape the final product.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Dr. Sophie Balk, Children's Hospital at Montefiore and Professor of Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, for her review of earlier drafts of this manuscript. We would also like to thank all of the ISMMS faculty who participate in the CCCIP and are continuing to work with us to improve it.

Funding Statement

Support for medical students on this project (LG and OB) was provided by the Ramon Murphy Program for Global Health Education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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• Published: 03 November 2023

Towards a greater engagement of universities in addressing climate change challenges

• Walter Leal Filho   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1241-5225 1 , 2 ,
• Sebastian Weissenberger 3 ,
• Johannes M. Luetz 4 , 5 , 6 ,
• Javier Sierra 2 , 7 ,
• Izabela Simon Rampasso 8 ,
• Ayyoob Sharifi 9 , 10 ,
• Rosley Anholon 11 ,
• Joao Henrique Paulinho Pires Eustachio 2 &
• Marina Kovaleva 2  

Scientific Reports volume  13 , Article number:  19030 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Climate change
• Environmental impact

Many higher education institutions around the world are engaged in efforts to tackle climate change. This takes place by not only reducing their own carbon footprint but also by educating future leaders and contributing valuable research and expertise to the global effort to combat climate change. However, there is a need for studies that identify the nature of their engagement on the topic, and the extent to which they are contributing towards addressing the many problems associated with climate change. Against this background, this paper describes a study that consisted of a review of the literature and the use of case studies, which outline the importance of university engagement in climate change and describe its main features. The study identified the fact that even though climate change is a matter of great relevance to universities, its coverage in university programmes is not as wide as one could expect. Based on the findings, the paper also lists the challenges associated with the inclusion of climate change in university programmes. Finally, it describes some of the measures which may be deployed in order to maximise the contribution of higher education towards handling the challenges associated with a changing climate.

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Introduction.

Many universities worldwide are continuously showing their commitment to preparing students for a role in society where they can contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation 1 . Education plays an important role in changing people's behaviour and attitudes; young people in the classrooms can learn about the impacts of climate change and how to mitigate and adapt to it, and they can be motivated to act 2 . The university’s role in relation to climate change education is critical in addressing scientific, environmental, social, and political challenges. Future decision-makers need to make their decisions from an informed position, and for this reason, climate change education and research programmes are of major importance 3 . Higher education institutions (HEIs) are part of both the solution and the problem regarding climate change 4 . By becoming actively engaged in efforts against climate change, HEIs can provide research-based and educational solutions to identify the most critical climate impacts and ways to handle them. Institutions can operate as hubs by creating, testing, and disseminating information about climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. Furthermore, HEI often undertakes research activities and seize upon opportunities to generate innovative knowledge that can help their local communities to adapt to climate change 5 . They deliver significant engagement and provide a platform for designing, testing and implementing innovative practices which may help in efforts to address the many impacts of climate change, locally, nationally, and globally. For instance, universities are among the key players in exploring and developing effective carbon pricing solutions including their economic feasibility and stimulating investments to reduce the technologies’ costs 6 . In the light of additional pressure posed by climate change on healthcare systems worldwide, it is essential to strengthen educational and training programs by introducing ‘climate change’ into medical school curricula and students’ activities. This will ensure that graduate health professionals acquire knowledge and skills to diagnose and respond to the health threats and impacts of climate change and understand public health issues 7 , 8 . Another role universities play in affecting climate action-related transformational change is through their engagement in advocacy and activism 9 . For instance, in the United States and Canada HEI have been involved in the fossil fuel divestment (FFD) 10 , 11 . In the United States, campaigns, primarily led by students, focus on justice including social, environmental, and economic issues 10 . In Canada, the campaigns use the signing of sit-ins, petitions, protests and rallies as well as branding and messaging from international environmental organizations 11 .

On the other hand, universities are contributors to climate change and hence, often feel an obligation to address individual impacts by greening their campuses. Many HEIs around the world have adopted initiatives such as the ‘carbon neutral university’ converting to low-emission or carbon–neutral organisations. As examples of these initiatives, the University for Sustainable Development in Eberswalde and Leuphana University both in Germany, are on a path to becoming carbon–neutral 12 . Others are engaging in initiatives to handle climate change as part of their efforts in the field of sustainable development 13 . In addition to carbon neutrality and waste management, universities aim to improve materials and resource use efficiency, environmental quality, retrofitting residential and non-residential construction buildings, and increase green areas and use of green transportation. For instance, Arizona State University, one of the largest public universities in the USA, with almost 100,000 students and employees, reported the achievement of carbon neutrality in 2019 14 . Development of green campuses in China focuses on energy and resource efficiency through introducing energy-saving technology in campus buildings and facilities, energy statistics and auditing, as well as energy-saving operations. All these initiatives are strongly supported by the national government through policies and financial tools 15 . In Italy, the largest campus in the country of the University of Calabria (UNICAL) has significantly improved its energy systems through the use of photovoltaic, solar, and geothermal energy produced on campus 16 . Additionally, by introducing internal carbon pricing, universities could demonstrate practical implications for emission reduction through waste management 17 and energy use 18 . Climate change education and approaches to greening campuses are also considered among the university's strategies to contribute to sustainable development 19 . The strong linkage between these fields contributes to overcoming challenges in attaining the goals of the other. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 13, particularly Target 13.3, aims at “improving education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning”. Furthermore, the wide range of initiatives launched to foster climate change literacy and education including the UNESCO Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development Programme 20 . The program contributed to advancing such topics as sustainable development and climate change in national curricula and educational standards across the countries 21 .

Most of the current studies report on one or several aspects concerning HEIs efforts to tackle climate change, like the aforementioned examples. Therefore, there is a need for studies that identify the overall nature of HEIs participation, and the extent to which they are contributing towards addressing the many problems associated with climate change. This paper explores universities' engagement in addressing the threats posed by climate change, its main features, potential measures towards its maximisation, and associated challenges worldwide. To achieve this goal, this research consisted of a review of the literature and the use of case studies, which outline the importance of university engagement in climate change and describe its main features. The consequent sections describe methods used, obtained results, and lessons learned. The paper concludes by summarising the main findings and describing measures that higher education institutions should deploy in the long term, to better address climate change.

The objective of this study is to find out what climate change-related themes and topics have been pursued by universities. One way to answer this question is to examine publications that have focused on issues related to climate change education and research programs and initiatives in academic institutions. For this purpose, we relied on bibliometric analysis techniques as they can highlight key terms that have been used in the literature and their interactions. Various software tools such as CiteSpace, SciMAT, and VOSviewer are available for bibliometric analysis. Here, we used the latter as its term co-occurrence maps are more detailed and easier to interpret 22 , 23 . The input data for bibliometric analysis can be obtained from academic literature databases such as Scopus and the Web of Science. In this study, we used the Web of Science for its reputation to index quality peer-reviewed literature. To retrieve relevant literature for inclusion in the analysis, we developed a search string that is a combination of terms related to climate change, impacts of climate change, teaching and research programs, and academic institutions.

The full search string is available in the “ Appendix ”. It was created to embrace the main topics related to this research (inclusion criteria), with a structure of four main blocks. The first is related to terms related to climate change and encompasses variations commonly used in the literature such as ‘global warming’, ‘climate variability’, etc. The second block of terms is related to ‘extreme events’, while the third brings some practices of universities such as education, teaching, training, curricula, research, etc. Finally, the last section of the search string was created due to the focus selected in this study, which is to understand the perspective of higher education institutions. It is worth considering, however, that the terms chosen might now encompass the totality of possible terms related to climate change since there is a huge variety used throughout the literature. The authors are aware of this issue and brought this discussion as a limitation in the conclusions section.

The initial literature search was conducted on July 18, 2022, and returned 1214 documents. These documents were screened to only include those that show how climate change education and/or research is pursued by universities (exclusion criteria). At the end of the screening process. A total of 794 documents remained in the database and were used for term co-occurrence analysis in VOSviewer. The co-occurrence analysis was done in several steps to ensure obtaining the most accurate outputs. To be more specific, after the initial analysis, we found out many synonyms need to be merged (e.g., ‘climate change’ and ‘climate-change’). For this purpose, we developed a thesaurus file and added it to the software. The process was repeated until no synonyms were found in the output. The final output (Fig.  1 ) is a network of nodes and links, where node size is proportional to the occurrence to frequency (of terms) and link width is proportional to the strength of connections between terms. Closely connected terms form clusters that can be interpreted as major thematic areas that have received relatively more attention in the literature. In this perspective, it was possible to label clusters manually since the number of clusters formed and the terms extracted were manageable. To label the clusters, the authors analysed the relationship of terms of a specific cluster and provided a label representing the discussion embedded in each one of the clusters 24 . These will be further explained in the results section.

Results of the term co-occurrence analysis.

In addition to this, we completed the literature review by selecting a set of key case studies regarding four core areas for university engagement, namely (1) research and development, (2) teaching and learning, (3) governance and operations, and (4) civic engagement and community outreach. We performed a literature mapping using the Web of Science database to identify the case studies. This was completed using a general search using Google and recognised case studies implemented by universities in different countries. Relevant case studies were selected by the research team using the following criteria: number of citations, degree of innovation, diversity of knowledge and research areas, geographical diversity, and potential for replication and mainstreaming in other contexts. Four tables were designed with selected examples, which entail a specific set of information, namely the type of climate change work undertaken, the main purpose of the implemented initiative, the name of the participating universities, and the country. Also, to ensure the tracing of the information, the tables contain bibliographical references or web links. This also allows a cross-check of the information and enables readers to obtain further details.

Using this literature mapping approach identified, collected, and analysed the existing literature on specific case studies of interest. This process made it possible to highlight and synthesise key issues from the selected literature, thus providing clear insights into the state of knowledge on key case study topics. Accordingly, literature mapping conceptualised a range of possible future research directions, policy implications, and/or practical recommendations for different stakeholder groups. Crucially, surveying the state of the art in this manner helped the researchers to avoid duplicating previous work, identify areas where further investigation is needed, and enable the development of strategies for evidence-based decision-making that researchers, policymakers, and practitioners may leverage in different contexts.

Results and discussion

Bibliometric assessment.

Figure  1 shows that multiple topics related to climate change adaptation and mitigation have been addressed in the context of higher education. This is evidenced by the diversity of terms in each of the four clusters which can be considered as research strands explored by the literature in the field. The output of the term co-occurrence analysis (Fig.  1 ) shows that multiple topics related to climate change adaptation and mitigation have been addressed in publications on climate change-related education and/or research activities/programs.

The red cluster describes aspects related to general policies aimed at reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing resilience and adaptive capacity, embracing terms related to biodiversity, food systems, and ecosystem services. Studies in this cluster usually discuss the relevance of governance in HEIs to ensure universities’ contribution towards reducing their impact, implementing adaptation strategies on climate change vulnerabilities, and fostering sustainable development 25 , 26 , 27 . This governance perspective is relevant since it could contribute to the universities’ process of ensuring that desired practices are initiated, implemented, and continued by the several stakeholders engaged in the process 28 . This perspective also implies the adaptation policies that aim to assist the universities in assembling their several systems, tackling the university’s campus operations, and helping society by producing research on the climate change field, especially related to themes such as ecology, food, and biodiversity. Ecology and biodiversity policies in the context of higher institutions are also discussed, especially in the context of green spaces, generating externalities in the perspective of ecological function and urban communities 29 and fostering the discussion of how to maintain biodiversity in a context of climate change adaptation since many species are constrained by changes in climate 30 , 31 . This cluster also presents studies on campus as ecosystems, exploring whether humans and the biosphere could be reconnected, enhancing the awareness of how to deal with the biodiversity loss related to climate change 32 .

The yellow cluster is focused on climate and environmental education and risk reduction. This cluster, in particular, focuses on the educational practices of universities and the extent to which they address climate change and environmental challenges 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 . More specifically, it deals with the knowledge and sustainability behaviour of students in the process of educating well-versed agents in climate change aspects and capable of conducting adaptation and mitigation strategies 37 , 38 . This cluster also reports on integrating disaster reduction for extreme events 39 , 40 , 41 , highlighting the significance of disaster risk education and environmental awareness programs to effectively address these challenges 42 .

Studies that belong to the blue cluster, in turn, are mainly focused on assessing the temperature, precipitation, and other aspects of climate change variability 43 , 44 , 45 . The relation this cluster has with HEIs is mainly focused on research practices, where research centres contribute to assessing climate change challenges by finding patterns and estimating indicators related, for example, to rainfall, temperature, and extreme events 46 , 47 . For example, Stefanidis and Alexandridis 48 studied the temporal variability, precipitation trends, and evapotranspiration in two forest regions in Greece. They discussed the drought scenarios and the implications for climate change adaptation. Similarly, Rawat and colleagues 49 analysed the rainfall variability and intensity of long-term monthly rainfall data using the Precipitation Concentration Index, which, according to the authors, could prepare governments for extreme weather events, which are imperative to adaptation to climate change conditions.

Finally, the green cluster is the second in a number of terms and has two main discussion streams. The first one is related to the climate change impact on water resources, land, and soil degradation, and inducing droughts 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 . The second perspective this cluster highlights is related to the precedents of climate change as well as the adaptation and mitigation strategies to address the challenges related to climate change. For example, there are reports on the potential of organic agricultural systems instead of crop productions using nitrogen-based fertilisers, since it leads to reduced N 2 O emissions 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , the importance of renewable energy production systems 60 , 61 as well as the industrial and human activities which can contribute to the emission of GHGs and environmental pollution 62 , impacting negatively human health 63 , 64 .

Research and development

Climate change research has been led since 1896 with Svante Arrhenius founding paper 65 . Since then, the volume of scientific literature on climate change has been increasing rapidly. The total number of articles on climate change exceeds 120 000 up to 2015 66 ; almost 90 000 papers were published between 1991 and 2011 67 . New fields of research have merged over time, often responding to society’s needs, such as attribution science, first documented in 2004 68 and included in the IPCC AR5 69 , the study of social health impacts of climate change, the incorporation of traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous perspectives, and generally speaking a growing emphasis on adaptation, including novel approaches like community-based adaptation 70 and participatory action-research 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 . Table  1 presents a set of elected case studies on research institutions.

At the same time, climate change research has become more interdisciplinary and transitioned from individual researchers to research centres, hosted by one or several institutions. It also more often than before involves stakeholders from society, leading to collaborative research initiatives. We illustrate this through examples for all three types of research centres in Canada: single-university—the Prairie Climate Centre, multi-university—the Réseau Inondations InterSectoriel du Québec (RIISQ), collaborative, and Ouranos. Two of the most influential research centers, both in numbers and impact of publications, are the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, which pioneered ground-breaking work on planetary boundaries, climate tipping points, and exploration of past and future climates in an interdisciplinary perspective 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 . It must be stressed that climate change research is not an exclusivity of European or North American universities. Institutions like the Munasinghe Institute for Development and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development are highly respected in the fields of adaptation or sustainability applied to climate change and incorporate issues, approaches, and values relevant to the Global South in their research. As we wish to demonstrate through the selected research projects below, there is a trend for the development of international, interdisciplinary cross-institution initiatives in climate change research, certainly also favoured by funding agency policies, especially in the research and development sector. Such projects can have a real impact on the ground; however, they need careful scientific and organisational planning in order to be truly successful 79 . Table  2 presents a set of elected case studies on research projects.

Teaching and learning

Equipping graduates with the necessary skills and capabilities required to succeed in both their personal and professional lives is a crucial goal for higher education institutions. In higher education institutions, there are varied interpretations of the cultural, social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainable development. Simultaneously, teachers do not reach a consensus on how these different dimensions are interconnected 80 . Furthermore, there are diverse perspectives on how these matters should be approached within various degree programs and courses, and this can influence students' perceptions of values related to sustainability, ethics, and social responsibility 81 . However, understanding the complexity of climate change may be challenging for students and educators 82 . This could clarify why students' awareness of sustainability issues is not uniform or consistent 83 . However, it also underscores the potential intricacy associated with enhancing awareness of social, economic, and environmental issues among students 84 . From this viewpoint, students should acquire the skills not just to translate innovative ideas into tangible projects but also to effectively integrate environmental, social, and financial goals 85 .

In this regard, it is vital to increase their interest in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as prepare graduates to implement real-life solutions based on sustainability criteria 86 . Against this background, it is necessary not only to identify misconceptions and guarantee a proper understanding of climate change’s roots and consequences but also to help students become active and critical citizens capable of facilitating real change. In this context, the integration of SDGs in higher education requires the identification and clarification of educational objectives, as well as the adoption of innovative teaching and learning strategies suitable to transform education 87 .

Table  3 presents a set of selected case studies on teaching and learning. Several studies have addressed the issue of students’ perceptions and misconceptions regarding climate change. Some studies have used large samples to explore the drivers of pro-environmental behaviour 88 , but small-group, classroom-based, or program-based studies are also frequent approaches to explore the different ways how students understand climate change 89 , 90 , 91 . As mentioned below, defining, and clarifying the required capabilities and the necessary skills to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs in higher education is essential 92 . A growing number of studies have addressed this issue, using different strategies such as comprehensive approaches based on literature review techniques and the use of surveys 87 , as well as small-group studies relying on quantitative and qualitative techniques 93 . In addition to this, non-conventional, student-centered teaching and learning techniques are becoming increasingly popular in higher education due to their potential to help students acquire multiple learning outcomes 94 . Methodologies such as problem-based learning 95 , 96 , 97 , inquiry-based learning 98 , gamification 99 , 100 , or participatory case studies 101 , are examples of innovative strategies to promote education for sustainable development.

Governance, operations, and institutional practice

All around the world, universities are increasingly adopting carbon–neutral goals and practices 102 , 103 . This is reflected by the growing number of higher education providers that are aiming to become fully carbon–neutral institutions (through low-carbon operational practices) while at the same time innovating their curricula to better educate students (about the benefits of carbon neutrality) 1 , 12 , 104 . With this twin strategy, universities are decreasing their own “carbon footprint” (by lowering institution-linked greenhouse gasses) and increasing the wider community’s “carbon brain print” (by teaching about low-carbon living) 102 , 105 . The literature, therefore, categorises “governance” into matters about the immediate institutional governance and operational practices (of the universities themselves) and their secondary flow-on function of informing and influencing the governance and operational practices of other key stakeholders beyond their organisational confines (e.g., local communities, national governments, and the corporate sector) 106 . Table  3 shows a set of selected case studies addressing areas of governance, operations, and institutional practice. In terms of facilitating institution-wide carbon neutrality, universities are implementing a raft of strategies that may include private-private solar system partnerships 102 , renewables, electric vehicles, tree plantation and enhanced energy efficiency 107 , remote sensing, and campus tree surveys to maximise biosequestration and campus-based ecosystem services 108 , campus community gardening to enhance CSR and institutional sustainability practice 109 , in addition to a range of other priority actions that may achieve net zero carbon buildings and (Paris-aligned) carbon reduction targets 102 , 110 . Furthermore, many universities have announced institutional commitments to divest their endowments from fossil fuel holdings while recalibrating their operational practices in alignment with the UN SDGs 111 , 112 , 113 . These actions may have image-enhancing effects 114 . Pertinent performance metrics are captured by the Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings, an annual process that assesses universities against the UN SDGs. In its most recent fourth edition, THE has ranked a total of 1406 universities from 106 countries/regions 115 . Finally, additional information on the strategies, operations, and budgetary plans of higher education institutions (HEIs) regarding their transition to net zero or carbon neutrality might not be found in academic publications but could be available in “grey literature” produced by the HEIs themselves, focusing on their performance and strategic vision. Table  4 includes a set of selected case studies on governance, operations, and institutional practice.

Civic engagement and community outreach

The crucial role that Universities must play is also reflected by the increasing efforts from higher education institutions to foster civic engagement and expand their community outreach. Universities play a vital role in fostering civic commitment and community outreach within their localities. By leveraging their resources, expertise, and diverse talent pool, universities can initiate impactful initiatives that address community needs and promote positive social change. One effective approach is to establish university-community partnerships, where faculty, students, and staff collaborate with local organizations and residents to identify pressing issues and co-create sustainable solutions. Additionally, universities can integrate service-learning programs into their curricula, encouraging students to actively engage with the community while applying their academic knowledge to real-world challenges. Offering workshops, seminars, and public events on relevant topics further encourages dialogue and knowledge-sharing between the institution and the community. By actively involving themselves in the community's fabric, universities can contribute to the betterment of society, nurture socially responsible citizens, and empower students to become agents of positive transformation.

In this context, cooperation among stakeholders led to the concept of “co-creation for sustainability”, which deals with relevant notions and innovative strategies for transformative research 116 , such as participatory action research (PAR) and other community-based research strategies, the creation of urban living labs, and the use of innovative strategies for civic cooperation such as student service learning 117 . Table  5 shows a set of selected successful case studies where cooperation between universities and local stakeholders proved to contribute to facilitating civic engagement/community outreach in their local communities. Against this background, PAR, a community-based technique in which beneficiaries take an active role in research 118 , could be used for multiple purposes to deal with the challenges generated by climate change, such as improving climate planning processes 119 , increase engagement of different stakeholders and identify the scope for developing the adaptive capability of local communities 120 , monitor environmental risks and damage 121 , or strengthening climate justice 122 . Other forms of transformative research rely on multidisciplinary teams formed by diverse stakeholders engaged in evaluating knowledge and providing technical advice 123 or fostering private–public partnerships to boost engineering solutions 124 , among other examples. In line with this multi-stakeholder cooperation, universities and other higher education institutions play a crucial role in creating ‘urban living labs’, understood as spaces where research is used for promoting innovation and collaboration to tackle social, economic, and environmental needs 125 , 126 , 127 . Finally, experiential learning strategies such as student service learning are becoming increasingly popular in higher education 128 , mainly because of their potential to foster critical thinking as well as promote social and civic engagement among students and enhance cooperation between different social actors 125 , 129 .

Conclusions

As this paper has outlined, universities can provide substantial contributions to both consumption and emissions globally. They also have the potential to play a key role in efforts to drive sustainability, both locally and globally.

As this paper has shown, many universities are switching to green operations that involve sustainability in campus activities such as water and energy consumption, waste production, and personal and institutional mobility, all of which have connections with climate change. Improvements may be pursued in respect of the implementation of activities such as smart waste management, sustainable transportation systems, and the more sustainable maintenance of existing buildings. Since daily campus operations result in the usage of large amounts of energy, it is important that higher education institutions that currently use fossil-fuel-based energy -which results in greater greenhouse gas releases- switch towards renewable energy use.

The production of waste also contributes greatly to global carbon emissions, and universities produce a significant amount of waste. Therefore, it is important to put in place appropriate strategies to manage waste and ideally prevent it, especially food waste since a large percentage of food wastage is generated at university canteens. There are ample examples of successfully-run recycling programmes, which may mobilise staff and students in a meaningful way. Some may not only reuse waste but also produce energy from it. Moreover, a further promising area is the use of cleaner transportation methods, as a tool to reduce the carbon footprint of higher education institutions. This may involve the use of campuswide shuttle services, carpooling, or the use of bicycles, by both staff and students. There is also much scope to reduce greenhouse emissions from travel. Whereas this is an essential part of universities´ operations -since both staff and students regularly use travel as part of their mobility and to attend conferences. Here, adequate solutions are also needed, for instance, the optimisation of trips and routes, and greater use of online facilities for those events whose physical attendance is not essential.

Higher education institutions can take several steps to address climate change. Such steps range from curriculum reform to creating new research initiatives and collaborations. Some of the recommendations that may further the cause of a greater engagement of universities on climate change include:

Curriculum Reform: as it is shown in Table  3 , there are few studies focusing on climate change aspects in curriculums, indicating a large opportunity for research. In this sense, higher education institutions should review their curricula to ensure that current and future generations of students are educated in the fundamentals of climate science (in technical subjects) and the global effects of climate change (in non-technical ones).

Education & Awareness: Aligned with the first recommendation, institutions should promote educational campaigns and public awareness initiatives to educate students and the public on the importance of reducing their carbon footprint. The case studies on civic engagement and community outreach shown in Table  5 evidence interesting examples of ways of implementing this kind of initiative for the public in general. As presented in the literature, the complexity and inter-transdisciplinary character of sustainability inhibits its understanding to some extent, but concrete examples of carbon footprint reduction can be an important approach to address this challenge.

Research: There are relevant challenges highlighted in the literature for inserting climate change in university programmes, evidencing the need for studies to deeply analyse these difficulties and propose manners for overcoming them. In addition, the existing research institutions, initiatives, and/or programs focusing on climate change-related aspects (Tables  1 and 4 ) can play a key role in enhancing the efforts in the field and institutions worldwide should encourage and fund research initiatives that seek to understand the causes and effects of climate change, develop solutions and technologies, and identify innovative strategies for addressing the climate crisis.

Collaboration: In the same line of reasoning of the previous recommendation, institutions should establish and enhance partnerships with local governments, non-profit organizations, and other stakeholders to collaborate on initiatives to mitigate climate change.

Renewable Energy: Another evidenced source of improvement opportunity regarding climate change is that institutions should invest in renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal, to reduce their emissions and promote sustainability. They should, in other words, practice what they preach.

Green Buildings: Aligned with the previous recommendation, institutions should strive to create and maintain sustainable buildings, such as LEED-certified buildings, to reduce their environmental impact. In Table  4 , examples of case studies on governance, operations, and institutional practice are evidenced, which can be used as a starting point for further development.

This paper has some limitations. The first is related to the sample. The study analysed 1214 documents that only considered how climate change education and/or research is pursued by universities, without focusing on other parameters. Secondly, only 794 documents remained in the database and were used for term co-occurrence analysis in VOSviewer. In addition, the case studies focused on four areas, namely research and development, teaching and learning, governance and operations, and civic engagement and community outreach, and did not consider elements such as collaboration with external organisations. Finally, the authors used the main terms to create the search string, and because of the diversity of the field, it was not possible to track all the possible terms related to each one of the four dimensions. However, this last limitation could be an opportunity for future studies as new terms that are not commonly used till the date of this research might start to gain attention and start to be adopted. Despite these limitations, the paper provides a welcome addition to the literature since it documents and promotes the current emphasis given by universities to climate change.

As to future trends on climate change and universities, there is a perceived need for greater engagement. Universities are important hubs of innovation and knowledge creation, with a comprehensive body of information and experience, which can significantly help to address the challenges of climate change, and across several subjects and contexts. As such, more universities are expected to intensify their efforts in research, education, and outreach activities related to climate change.

Moreover, universities should become more involved in the public policy and advocacy sphere, advocating for solutions to climate change and engaging in climate-related projects. This involvement is expected to increase as universities become more involved in the global climate change discourse.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

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Acknowledgements

This study is part of the “100 papers to accelerate the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals” initiative.

This work was funded by Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, TÉLUQ University.

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Walter Leal Filho

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W.L.F. conceived the study. W.L.F., S.W., J.L., J.S., I.S.R., A.S., R.A., J.H.P.P.E., M.K wrote the main manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Leal Filho, W., Weissenberger, S., Luetz, J.M. et al. Towards a greater engagement of universities in addressing climate change challenges. Sci Rep 13 , 19030 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45866-x

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Follow our news, recent searches, school's out: how climate change threatens education, advertisement.

Students use umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun as they line up to wait for their classes outside their school in Manila, the Philippines, on Apr 2, 2024. More than a hundred schools in the Philippine capital shut their classrooms on Apr 2, as the tropical heat hit "danger" levels, education officials said. (File photo: AFP/Jam Sta Rosa)

BANGKOK: Record-breaking heat last month that prompted governments in Asia to close schools offers fresh evidence of how climate change is threatening the education of millions of children.

The arrival of seasonal rains has now brought relief to some parts of the region, but experts warn the broader problem remains and many countries are poorly prepared to handle the impacts of climate change on schooling.

Asia is warming faster than the global average and climate change is producing more frequent, longer and more intense heat waves.

But heat is not the only challenge.

A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which can result in heavy rains and flooding .

This can damage schools or put them out of commission while they are used as shelters.

Hot weather can also drive wildfires and spikes in air pollution, which have caused school closures everywhere from India to Australia.

"The climate crisis is already a reality for children in East Asia and Pacific," the United Nations children's agency UNICEF warned last year.

Mohua Akter Nur, 13, is living proof of that claim, sweltering in a one-room home in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka after her school closed.

Intermittent electricity means she cannot even rely on a fan to cool the cramped dwelling.

"The heat is intolerable," she told AFP last month.

"Our school is shut, but I can't study at home."

Commentary: A hotter Singapore will change how we work and live

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Feeling hot, more often? More days of extreme heat predicted in National Climate Change Study

Poorest hit hardest.

April marked the 11th straight month of record global heat and the pattern is clear in Bangladesh, said Shumon Sengupta, country director for non-governmental organisation (NGO) Save the Children.

"Not only are the temperatures higher, the duration of the high temperatures is much longer," he told AFP.

"Previously, few areas used to have these heatwaves, now the coverage of the country is much higher," he added.

Schools across much of Asia are simply not equipped to deal with the growing consequences of climate change.

Bangladesh's urban schools can be sturdy, but are often overcrowded, with little ventilation, said Sengupta.

In rural areas, corrugated metal roofs can turn classrooms into ovens and electricity for fans is unreliable.

In Bangladesh and elsewhere, students often walk long distances to and from school, risking heatstroke in the process.

But closing schools comes with serious consequences, "particularly for children from poorer, vulnerable communities who do not have access to resources such as computers, internet and books", said Salwa Aleryani, UNICEF's health specialist for East Asia and the Pacific.

Those children "are also less likely to have better conditions at home to protect them during heatwaves".

They may be left unsupervised by parents who cannot afford to stay home and school closures put children at higher risk of child labour, child marriage and even trafficking, said Sengupta.

Climate change also threatens schooling indirectly.

UNICEF research in Myanmar found that crop shortages caused by rising temperatures and unpredictable rain caused families to pull children from school to help with work or because they could no longer afford fees.

Some wealthy countries in the region have taken steps to protect children's education in the face of a changing climate.

In Japan, fewer than half of all public schools had air conditioning in 2018, but that figure jumped to over 95 per cent by 2022 after a series of heatwaves.

Not all impacts can be mitigated, however, even in developed economies.

Australian authorities have repeatedly closed schools because of wildfires and research has found long-term impacts on learning among students whose communities were worst affected.

Developing countries in the region need help to invest in upgrading infrastructure, said Sengupta, but the only real solution to the crisis lies in tackling the root cause: climate change.

"It's very important for government and policymakers to really, really wake up on this," he said.

"The climate crisis is a child crisis. Adults are causing the crisis, but it's children who are impacted the most."

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Houston’s flood problems offer lessons for cities trying to adapt to a changing climate

Professor Emeritus of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan

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Scenes from the Houston area looked like the aftermath of a hurricane in early May 2024 after a series of powerful storms flooded highways and neighborhoods and sent rivers over their banks north of the city.

Hundreds of people had to be rescued from homes, rooftops and cars during storms, according to The Associated Press. Huntsville registered nearly 20 inches of rain from April 29 to May 4. Another storm system in mid-May blew out windows in Houston high rises and caused more flash flooding on urban streets and already saturated ground in the region.

Floods are complex events, and they are about more than just heavy rain. Each community has its own unique geography and climate that can exacerbate flooding. On top of those risks, extreme downpours are becoming more common as global temperatures rise.

I work with a center at the University of Michigan that helps communities turn climate knowledge into projects that can reduce the harm of future climate disasters. Flooding events like the Houston area experienced provide case studies that can help cities everywhere manage the increasing risk.

Flood risks are rising

The first thing recent floods tell us is that the climate is changing.

In the past, it might have made sense to consider a flood a rare and random event – communities could just build back. But the statistical distribution of weather events and natural disasters is shifting.

What might have been a 1-in-500-years event may become a 1-in-100-years event , on the way to becoming a 1-in-50-years event. When Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017, it delivered Houston’s third 500-year flood in the span of three years.

Basic physics points to the rising risks: Global greenhouse gas emissions are increasing global average temperatures. Warming leads to increasing precipitation and more intense downpours, and increased flood potential, particularly when storms hit on already saturated ground.

Communities aren’t prepared

Recent floods are also revealing vulnerabilities in how communities are designed and managed.

Pavement is a major contributor to urban flooding, because water cannot be absorbed and it runs off quickly. The Houston area’s frequent flooding illustrates the risks. Its impervious surfaces expanded by 386 square miles (1,000 square kilometers) between 1997 and 2017, according to data collected by Rice University . More streets, parking lots and buildings meant more standing water with fewer places for rainwater to sink in.

If the infrastructure is well designed and maintained, flood damage can be greatly reduced. However, increasingly, researchers have found that the engineering specifications for drainage pipes and other infrastructure are no longer adequate to handle the increasing severity of storms and amounts of precipitation. This can lead to roads being washed out and communities being cut off . Failures in maintaining infrastructure, such as levees and storm drains, are a common contributor to flooding.

In the Houston area, reservoirs are also an essential part of flood management, and many were at capacity from persistent rain. This forced managers to release more water when the storms hit.

For a coastal metropolis such as the Houston-Galveston area, rapidly rising sea levels can also reduce the downstream capacity to manage water. These different factors compound to increase flooding risk and highlight the need to not only move water but to find safe places to store it.

The increasing risks affect not only engineering standards, but zoning laws that govern where homes can be built and building codes that describe minimum standards for safety, as well as permitting and environmental regulations.

By addressing these issues now, communities can anticipate and avoid damage rather than only reacting when it’s too late.

Four lessons from case studies

The many effects associated with flooding show why a holistic approach to planning for climate change is necessary, and what communities can learn from one another. For example, case studies show that:

Floods can damage resources that are essential in flood recovery, such as roads, bridges and hospitals . Considering future risks when determining where and how to build these resources enhances the ability to recover from future disasters . Jackson, Mississippi’s water treatment plant was knocked offline by flooding in 2022, leaving people without safe running water. Houston’s Texas Medical Center famously prepared to manage future flooding by installing floodgates, elevating backup generators and taking other steps after heavy damage during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001.

Flood damage does not occur in isolation. Downpours can trigger mudslides , make sewers more vulnerable and turn manufacturing facilities into toxic contamination risks . These can become broad-scale dangers, extending far beyond individual communities.

It is difficult for an individual or a community to take on even the technical aspects of flood preparation alone – there is too much interconnectedness. Protective measures like levees or channels might protect one neighborhood but worsen the flood risk downstream . Planners should identify the appropriate regional scale, such as the entire drainage basin of a creek or river, and form important relationships early in the planning process.

Natural disasters and the ways communities respond to them can also amplify disparities in wealth and resources. Social justice and ethical considerations need to be brought into planning at the beginning.

Learning to manage complexity

In communities that my colleagues and I have worked with , we have found an increasing awareness of the challenges of climate change and rising flood risks.

In most cases, local officials’ initial instinct has been to protect property and persist without changing where people live. However, that might only buy time for some areas before people will have little option but to move .

When they examine their vulnerabilities, many of these communities have started to recognize the interconnectedness of zoning, storm drains and parks that can absorb runoff, for example. They also begin to see the importance of engaging regional stakeholders to avoid fragmented efforts to adapt that could worsen conditions for neighboring areas.

This is an updated version of an article originally published Aug. 25, 2022 .

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• Disaster mitigation
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Episode 67: Policy, textiles, and design

Streamed on Tuesday, 31st October 2023, 15:00 GMT.

Making the most of materials: Africa’s skills in repair and repurposing point the way for the Global North

Although greater awareness and new legislation are beginning to drive better use of products and...

Circular economy explained

The Foundation's podcast makes the Lovie Award Shortlist

The Circular Economy Show podcasts has been shortlisted twice in the 2023 Lovie Awards

The Jeans Redesign (2019-2023)

The Jeans Redesign demonstrates how jeans can be designed and made for a circular economy.

Luca Locatelli: The Circle - a curation of circular economy stories

The Foundation is excited to have provided knowledge support for Luca Locatelli’s exhibition The...

The circular economy: a missing piece in city climate action plans?

This article presents a summary of findings from research carried out by the Foundation and Nordic...

One month left for food innovators to claim a share of £500,000

Big news from the Big Food Redesign Challenge

Explore a diverse range of circular economy stories and hear from leading voices in the transition with these videos, playlists, and series.

Circular economy articles

Dive into our circular economy thought leadership with articles written by in-house experts and specialist contributors. Explore real life stories from the people on the ground making the circular economy transition happen.

Popular circular economy case studies

Arup group limited, project reboot.

A leader in the transition to a circular built environment

“ I believe our philosophy is forward looking, that it is what is needed today and is in tune with the new spirit stirring in our time. Ove Arup, Key Speech Winchester 1972

Arup is a leading multi-disciplinary design firm that has played a central role in many of the most iconic and high-profile building projects of the recent era, such as the Sydney Opera House. Founded in 1946, Arup has become well known for its innovative approach to complex and challenging projects: predominantly in the built environment, but also in other sectors.

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Biodiversity

Biodiversity and the circular economy

This topic area examines how the circular economy can help shape a nature-positive future.

Built environment and the circular economy

In a circular economy our built environment can be a force for good

Business and the circular economy

A circular economy transformation will empower us with the tools to tackle global challenges, and...

Cities and the circular economy

This topic area looks at the role cities play in the transition to a circular economy.

Design and the circular economy

Design is a force for change. From innovative products or disruptive business models to entire...

Climate and the circular economy

This topic area looks at how fixing the economy can help fix climate change.

Education and learning towards a circular economy

We support circular economy learning across a growing global community of schools, colleges and...

Fashion and the circular economy

This topic area explores how the circular economy works for the fashion industry.

Finance and the circular economy

This topic area looks at the role of the financial sector in the shift to a circular economy.

Food and the circular economy

This topic area shows how moving to a circular economy for food will help people and nature thrive.

Government and policy for a circular economy

The circular economy provides a framework which allows governments and cities to realise many of...

Plastics and the circular economy

This topic area shows how the circular economy can help keep plastic in the economy and out of the...

Our mission is to accelerate the transition to a circular economy

News and updates from the ellen macarthur foundation.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation works to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. We develop and promote the idea of a circular economy, and work with business, academia, policymakers, and institutions to mobilise systems solutions at scale, globally.

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