COP28 Guide – The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit [ECIU] has produced a visual guide to COP28. John Lang says that this year’s summit represents the climax of the Paris Agreement’s first Global Stocktake on climate action. A course correction is necessary and desirable, but is it achievable?
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Education at COP28 – You can view education events that are taking place during COP28 c/o EAUC here. A few of these are virtual events.
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COP Pledge – The UK has pledged £1.6bn at COP28 to tackle deforestation, fund energy innovation projects around the world and pay for climate-related loss and damage.
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Act Now – The University of Bath’s Institute for Policy Research and Cambridge Zero, with support from the UK Universities Climate Network and in partnership with One Young World, has produced a 30-minute ActNowFilm. This pairs youth climate leaders and climate experts from 33 countries from across six continents. IPR said that the film:
“shows how young people from right around the world are capable, ready, and committed to be part of the urgent national and global climate debates and negotiations. It is a call for action that now really is the time for change, by officially involving young people in future climate negotiations and national climate policy design.”
The film will premiere in the Green Zone, Terra Auditorium, on Friday December 8th as part of COP28’s Youth, Children, Education and Skills Day. You can register for it on-line here.
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New Green Learning Agenda – The Brookings Institute report: New Green Learning Agenda: approaches for quality education for climate action, was written by Christina Kwauk and Olivia Casey. It discusses the role of education in developing a post-COVID-19 vision to radically transform the underlying economic systems of inequity and social structures of inequality that are at the root of our present suite of socioecological crises. It presents a heuristic intended to provide climate and education decisionmakers with:
1) a framework for conceptualizing the green skills needed to catalyze both technical and social transformation and
2) a tool for considering three approaches to quality education for climate action.
Depending on the context, certain approaches may be more feasible than others, although all three approaches should be pursued. Taken together, the framework presents a “new green learning agenda” in which each approach helps to solve a different aspect of the climate crisis in the spirit of the Paris Agreement—that is, through the lens of justice, equity, and fairness. As such, this framework offers proposals to ensure the needs and experiences of those often most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and social inequity, especially girls and women, are prioritized.
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15 Years 20 Locations – The Garden Classroom is celebrating 15 years of learning and recreational opportunities in over twenty locations across London, Kent and Sussex. It works with councils, farmers, landowners and the South Downs National Park and has a partnership with Islington Council’s Parks Department to deliver nature connection activities. Services include: climate change and curriculum education; Urban Forest School; gardening and conservation; forest school and CPD training for teachers; countryside day visits and residentials. It is the only accredited Forest School Association training provider within the M25. It also holds the quality badge from the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom. There’s a TGC video featuring young people.
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Teaching about Sustainability and Climate Change – UCL’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education has launched Teaching for Sustainable Futures, a free online professional development programme for teachers. This aims to help teachers across all subjects and phases to embed issues of climate change and sustainability into their teaching practice. Currently subject-specific modules for history and geography are available with more coming soon including maths and English. It is
- free and accessible online at any time
- tailored to individual subjects and to primary and secondary phases
- research-informed
- quality assured by UCL and
- aligned with the National Curriculum in England but adaptable to any classroom setting
There is also a 35-minute film Looking to the future: an introduction to climate change and sustainability in schools which is ideal for school training events. To access the film and the modules for history and geography, click here, and to receive information about future modules, click here.
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Global Learning Network – This is the middle of global learning fortnight being celebrated to mark the achievements of the network and to raise the profile of Global Learning. You can join the conversation by following The Global Learning Network’s social media and using the hashtags #GlobalLearningFortnight between 27th November and 10thDecember.
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National Education Nature Park – Since launching on October 4th, 1358 teachers from 1139 education settings have registered, and 382 had added their site boundaries to the Homepage map. On Thurs Dec7th 1615 to 1645, there will be a ‘Building climate and nature into the curriculum’ webinar. You can register and will find recordings of past webinars here. And you can sign up for the newsletter via E-Newsletter Signup | Education Nature Park with general enquiries going tohello@educationnaturepark.org.uk
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Our Beautiful Wild – WWF, RSPB and the National Trust have been working together over the past year to support over 200 diverse young people from all across the UK to produce a collective film about UK nature and the action being taken by young people to protect and restore it. You can watch the full film here, and access the additional resources on film-making, social action and how to host screenings here.
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World Toilet Day – This was November 20th. In the 21st century, the number of people who defecate in the open has fallen from 1.3 billion in 2000 to 420 million in 2022. Now only 5% of the global population are still defecating in fields, forests, bodies of water, or other open spaces, but 5% is still a large number. The World Bank has details.
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Tax Strategically – A recent Guardian feature argues for carbon taxes that target high-end consumers. It quotes data from the International Energy Agency that details energy-related CO2 emissions per person in 2021. In rich countries, the richest 10% of people have carbon footprints about 15 times greater than the poorest 10%. In China, South Africa, Brazil and India, however, the top 10% cause 30-40 times more emissions than the bottom 10%. It quotes Dr Lucas Chancel, a co-director of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics who argues that care needs to be taken when devising policies:
“In the global north, when you don’t factor in emissions inequality, you can end up with ‘yellow vests’ protest situations. There were a lot of households that overall emitted relatively little, but their transport emissions were quite high because they live in rural places and they had no other option than to use the car, so the carbon tax just meant they had less disposable income – it did not reduce their emissions – and there was a backlash.”