Live at COP 27 – Does your school want to explore global issues during COP27 and be part of the call for collective action? Find out more about the key international frameworks that support action on climate change and explore national and international responses to the conference themes from children and young people, community groups and ministerial bodies. You can sign up here c/o Future Learn.
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That SDG Moment – “The education of our children cannot wait. Dignified jobs cannot wait. Full equality for women and girls cannot wait. Comprehensive healthcare, meaningful climate action, biodiversity protection – these cannot be left for tomorrow.” This was UN Secretary-General António Guterres speaking recently at the SDG Moment 2022.
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Transforming Education – The UN’s Transforming Education Summit was held from 16-19 September. Organisers said that this promised to be an opportunity “to shift education to the top of the global political agenda and to mobilize action, ambition, solidarity and solutions to recover pandemic-related learning losses and sow the seeds to transform education in a rapidly changing world”. Click here to read the closing press release outlining the key commitments made.
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UKSSN – The UK Schools Sustainability Network is back for 2022/23. Check out these links to find out how to join, support or follow this network of networks: [i] calling secondary pupils, all teachers, school business leaders and members of leadership teams to join the Network. [ii] can you support the Network ? There is more about the UKSSN here.
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Different Subjects – A new guide from the Education & Training Foundation aims to introduce educators, teachers, trainers and tutors to the links between their subject area and sustainable development – to help them explore appropriate content they could bring to their teaching. See: Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Different Subject Areas.
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NAAEE Conference 2020 – We are now only a few days away from NAAEE’s 2022 Conference (October 12–15) & its Research Symposium (October 11–12) — and there’s still time to register to attend virtually or in-person. Click here to view the conference keynote speakers, conference sessions, and research symposium presentations. Virtual registration includes on-demand access to all virtual sessions until April 2023. You can learn more about the conference here.
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Direct Air Capture – In an article for The Conversation, Dawid Hanak from Cranfield University investigates direct air capture and asks: how advanced is technology to suck up carbon dioxide – and could it slow climate change?
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Critical Frequency – This media network was founded five years ago to provide different perspectives on climate change, and a number of their shows have topped podcast charts. They include Rigged, which unpicks PR tricks used by corporations to shape climate disinformation, Inherited, reporting the climate crisis from the perspective of young climate activists, and Drilled, a true-crime style podcast, whose most recent episode looks at toxic waste dumping by Ford in the 1960s.
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Climate Chaos Scotland – The climate crisis is such a global emergency that measures to address it should be funded directly from general taxation, according to a new report from a coalition of more than 60 organisations in Scotland. The report from Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) argues that actions to tackle it can and must complement those required to avert even deeper climate chaos.
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Breeding Birds – The 2021 breeding bird survey from the British Trust for Ornithology, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds shows population pictures for British birds.
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Blue to Brown – The American Geophysical Union [AGU] says that if global warming persists, blue lakes worldwide are at risk of turning green-brown. This is according to a new study which presents the first global inventory of lake colour. While substances such as algae and sediments affect the colour of lakes, the study finds air temperature, precipitation, lake depth and elevation also play important roles in determining a lake’s most common water colour. Blue lakes, which account for less than one-third of the world’s lakes, tend to be deeper and are found in cool, high-latitude regions with high precipitation and winter ice cover. Green-brown lakes, which are 69% of all lakes, are more widespread, and are found in drier regions, continental interiors, and along coastlines.
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Three Peats – The Environmental News Network says that forecasters are predicting a “three-peat La Niña” this year. This will be the third winter in a row that the Pacific Ocean has been in a La Niña cycle, something that’s happened only twice before in records going back to 1950. New research, recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that climate change is, in the short term, favoring La Niñas. Lead author, Robert Jnglin Wills, said: “The Pacific Ocean naturally cycles between El Niño and La Niña conditions, but our work suggests that climate change could currently be weighing the dice toward La Niña. At some point, we expect anthropogenic, or human-caused, influences to reverse these trends and give El Niño the upper hand.” You can read more c/o the University of Washington.
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Explore.org – Fat Bear Week is a celebration of the resilience, adaptability and strength of Katmai National Park’s brown bears. Bears are matched against each other in a “march madness” style competition and online visitors can vote who is ultimately crowned the Fat Bear Week 2022 Champion. Over the course of the week, virtual visitors learn more about the lives and histories of individual bears while also gaining a greater understanding of Katmai’s ecosystem through a series of live events hosted on explore.org. Here’s the livestream. If you like watching bears hanging around in fast-flowing streams, this is for you.
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One Small Step – The harvest mouse has finally made it to Scotland. It has been recorded officially in Scotland for the first time as part of a UK-wide survey, which was organised by the Mammal Society to discover more about the distribution of the species and create a conservation management plan for it. The Times says that harvest mouse presence is thought to indicate a healthy ecosystem.