How to implement climate change education in schools

Additional Information

There has been plenty of debate surrounding climate change education in schools, stemming from the recent student-led strikes.

Schools in several countries have started educating students on climate change, but as it’s a relatively new addition to the curriculum, not all are doing so effectively.

In the era of hands-on learning, it seems likely that students will learn about climate change if they see it first-hand.

Schools that want to impart climate change education on the youth must also be sure that they are leading by example in terms of sustainability and being environmentally-friendly.

For example, if they are teaching students how the Earth is suffering because of single-use plastic, they should make efforts to curb plastic waste in school cafeterias.

What we have done

Climate Situation in Africa

The most devastating adverse impacts of Climate Change in Africa and other subtropical countries includes

frequent drought,
increased environmental damage,
increased infestation of crop by pests and diseases,
depletion of household assets,
increased rural urban migration,
increased biodiversity loss,
depletion of wildlife and other natural resource base.
Others are changes in the vegetation type,
decline in forest resources,
and decline in soil moisture and nutrients,
increased health risks and the spread of infectious diseases,
changing livelihood systems

Review of the relationship between Climate change and the African economy revealed that inhabitants in the far north and those living adjacent the coast lines are far more at risk than those in other parts of the countries.

There is an estimated loss in GDP of between 6% and 30% by 2050 in African Countries and predicted 5-25% loss for the south-east and south-south African Countries with the overall impact being worse for the vulnerable groups such as the poor, women, children, old people and those that depend entirely on agriculture for their livelihoods

Our Survey

Climate Situation in Africa

We deemed it necessary to conduct a survey and demonstrate how much - building the literacy and awareness of Climate Change awareness amongst African students would be , in longer term.

We believe that Education has a crucial role to play in developing future leaders, who eventually would be the decision

We conducted studies in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Cameroon to determine the level of awareness of students and investigated their perception about the causes of Climate change. The sample for the study consisted of 1200 students who were selected from different institutions of higher learning The instrument used for data collection is a questionnaire titled “Students’ Perception of Climate Change Questionnaire” .

Our Conclusion

The result showed that the level of awareness of secondary school students about Climate Change was moderate with majority of them having their source of information about Climate Change from school, television, radio and library. The average number of the students have the understanding of the causes of Climate Change with good percentage of them having the opinion that human activities and pollution from industries are the major causes of Climate Change. Also, it showed that high percentage of the students showed their willingness to be agents of information dissemination on Climate Change.

Our Result

Our Conclusion

The study concluded that orientation programmes on climate change should be organized for the students from time to time.

Also, seminars and workshops should be organized for the subject teachers to enhance their experience in effectively providing students with the appropriate problem-solving and decisions making skills on climate change.

On this basis, we are on course to educate every African Student on Climate Change.

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