In a new declaration, the Climate Change Education Alliance is urging the international community to prioritise climate change literacy – and address the global challenge of our generation.
Read the Dubai Declaration on Climate Change
Today, our world is at a tipping point. Leading climate experts, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have repeatedly warned that we run the risk of exhausting our world’s natural resources and doing irrevocable damage to the environment. We know that human-made climate change has already driven unprecedented shifts in our atmosphere and ocean.
In the future, these experts warn that without action by States, climate change may drive ever more dramatic changes in our way of life, displacing communities, damaging our health and even impacting our sources of food and clean water.
But what is the role of education in addressing this? That’s the question posed by the Climate Change Education Alliance, a global group of experts from around the world formed by The Varkey Foundation at the Global Education & Skills Forum 2017.
In its year-long research, the alliance has considered the importance of climate change to education processes, the types of knowledge that learners need to understand it, and what teaching methods are effective. The alliance fundamentally believes that education should be part of the strategy to effectively manage the climate challenge.
The alliance is now calling upon the international community to take action to address the defining issue of our generation. In its Dubai Declaration on Climate Change, the Climate Change Education Alliance sets out a series of key principles about the role of education in planetary stewardship:
- Education is the responsibility of all
- Global interdependence and the imperative of planetary stewardship provide the critical context for education in the 21st Century
- Averting catastrophic climate change calls for improved climate literacy for all
- Education needs to foster a sense of global citizenship and ecological responsibility in all
- Education reform and climate action should be pursued as mutually reinforcing objectives in public policy
The alliance will formally launch the declaration at the Global Education & Skills Forum 2018 in Dubai, UAE.
The Climate Change Education Alliance is:
| Name | *Organisation |
|---|---|
| Leo Horn-Phathanothai | World Resources Institute [co-chair] |
| Sonia Medina | Children’s Investment Fund Foundation [co-chair] |
| Yuri Belfali | OECD |
| Miniya Chatterji | Jindal Steel and Power Group of Companies |
| Maggie MacDonnell | Global Teacher Prize Winner (2017) |
| Andrews Nchessie | Global Teacher Prize Finalist |
| Valter Pereiade Menezes | Global Teacher Prize Finalist |
| Stefan Raubenheimer | Independent Environmental Services Professional |
| Cynthia Scharf | UN Secretary General’s Climate Change Support Team |
| Liesbet Steer | Education Commission |
| Adriana Valenzuela Jimenez | Action for Climate Empowerment / United Nations Climate Change Secretariat |
| Jack MacMahon [supporting member] | Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, University of Cambridge |
| *The information and views set out in outputs by the Alliance are those of its Members and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of their organizations. | |