Education for climate change is for planetary survival

Emeritus Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Opinion - New Straits Times
May 24, 2022

240522

UNESCO is partnering with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on a monthly webinar.

The first one last month was on climate change education for social transformation. The series will run for eight months until November, on the last Tuesday of every month.

It is being held in the run-up to the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties that will take place from Nov 7 to 18 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

This series builds on the success of the "On the road to Berlin" online workshops in 2020 and 2021, which brought together more than 15,000 stakeholders to discuss cutting-edge Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) issues. Now it is ECC — Education for Climate Change.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls the climate crisis "a battle for our lives".

There is a growing call for education intensification to enable individuals, as agents of change, to acquire knowledge and attitudes that lead to sustainability transition of societies, as enshrined in SDG Target 4.7, and, indeed, in the entire 2030 Agenda.

Climate change education forms the basis of social transformation to save the planet and its inhabitants.

In this regard, many feel that climate change education must be transdisciplinary in nature.

The fact that climate change can be traced to the early days of the industrial/scientific revolutions shows that education was largely siloed in disciplinary and pedagogical terms.

It points to the failure of education to raise awareness of the dangers of climate change in a comprehensive way.

This situation continues today. Some studies indicate that less than half of those surveyed have adopted climate change education seriously. And even then, most admit that they are unclear about what it is intended for.

Such uncertainty is not surprising if one were to focus on the structural barriers that lie ahead. One is related to the understanding of present-day education, which is largely economic-centric and industry-led (an obvious slant towards the industrial revolution).

This is even more so in developing countries where education policies are mostly driven by economics at the expense of the planet (ecology) and people (cultural norms and values). This causes an almost unsurmountable imbalance in pursuing whole-change approaches to embed ESD.

Experiential learning, as well as indigenous knowledge, ought to be nurtured at the community level. This traditional framework should be used to fashion the new education for climate change.

In other words, education must be reframed in holistic terms and output, taking into consideration the context of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While Goal 13 is focused on climate action, it must be connected to as many SDGs as possible — SDG4 (education), SDG3 (health and wellness), SDG7 (clean energy), SDG12 (responsible consumption and production), SDG16 (peace and justice) and SDG17 (global partnership).

This necessitates a transdisciplinary approach, as advocated earlier.

There must be a connecting of the dots between theory and experience, modern and indigenous knowledge, content and context as well as flexibility in embracing other forms and formats of assessment in the making of a climate change-ready education.

The changes in education must be introduced as early as possible to monitor the impact. Some discussions can be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgrNuf3RFb8

The writer, an NST columnist for more than 20 years, is International Islamic University Malaysia rector