Introducing the Knight Bill – Click here to watch the introduction to the House of Lords second reading debate on Lord Jim Knight’s Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill. The debate starts at 1344 and you can use the slider on the screen to move to that point. A key point in Knight’s introduction was this: “… in schools here we have a demographic who are motivated by this issue, who want to act on it, who will carry on striking if we don’t offer something more constructive, and who can influence parents, grandparents and whole communities not just on waste and recycling but on transport, food, energy, and carbon capture too. So to the climate change policy experts listening, I would say education is the most powerful behaviour change in your arsenal.”
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Response to the Bill – The government’s initial response to the Bill can be found at this same link. The minister, Baroness Berridge (who’s the DfE’s COP26 minister), began speaking at 1517. As expected, she played the usual straight DfE bat. She said that there was considerable coverage in the national curriculum already, and was (of course) able to point to those schools that have already taken the opportunities open to them to change what they do. She ended with this: “I do not believe that amending the curriculum is the right way to enable our pupils to learn about a sustainable environment. We trust our schools to instil that ethos and ability to care for others and the environment and we have to trust our young people to learn from this and translate it into responsible citizenship.”
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DfE Committed – Meanwhile, in written evidence to a parliamentary committee, DfE said that it is committed to ensuring sustainability and climate change is embedded in all it does, recognising the role of education in the climate crisis and driving policy making to support the achievement of government’s climate aims. It announced that DfE’s role will include: [1] profiling England as a trail blazer on climate education (it is “currently exploring what a climate policy and programme package could look like”, [2] official and ministerial level stakeholder engagement with UK youth organisations (showcasing teachers and pupils who are leading climate action initiatives and working to secure buy-in from primary school senior leaders and unions), and [3] work in partnership with the Cabinet Office and other Government Departments to plan and deliver a high-level event on youth & empowerment at COP26 (provide a space for championing climate education, public participation and meaningful youth engagement on climate action). DfE has also established a Sustainability and Climate Change Unit and tomorrow’s NAEE blog will have more on this.
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A Well-sequenced Curriculum – The Green Jobs Taskforce report on what government needs to do to close the low carbon skills gap has been published. The government set this up last year and there are 15 recommendations. Two relate to education: #7 – as part of a well-sequenced curriculum, government, employers and education providers should promote the effective teaching of climate change and the knowledge and skills (in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and other key subjects) required for green jobs. And #8 – employers and government should work with the skills and education sector to attract and retain talented teachers to teach subjects, including in STEM, which are important for green jobs. SOSUK welcomes these, but says that it would have been good to have seen a recommendation about re-skilling existing teachers as well, as that is a big problem, with three quarters of teachers saying they do not know enough about climate change to integrate it into their teaching.
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68% of the SDGs – The Green Schools Project and SOS-UK have published the second UK-wide student survey (primary year 5 and 6, secondary and 6th form). The report can be accessed here. The key findings are: – 83% say it is fairly or very important for world leaders to do more to tackle climate change – 71% are interested in learning more about the environment – 62% say they are very or fairly concerned about climate change – 51% say they would like to be involved with projects or activities at their school or college that help the environment – 48% say they would like to spend more time in nature if they had the chance – but only 32% say they had heard of the UN Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs]. If you dig into the data you will find informative cross-UK comparisons; for example Scottish schools seem to do a better job in teaching about the SDGs than in the other 3 bits of the UK.
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Net / Zero – Do you worry as much about how to get to net-zero carbon as you do about climate change itself? Are you concerned about how to explain to your students about what the “net'” means? Are you confused about whether “carbon neutral” means the same as “net-zero”? Have you given up in despair trying to disentangle such arcane terms? If so, here’s an article in Treehugger that might (or not) help you. Then there’s this from The Conversation that agues that “net zero” (the hyphen is optional it seems) is a “dangerous trap”. Meanwhile, in the real world, campaigns are choosing to drop the “net” and just go for zero carbon. For example, Ashden’s “Let’s Go Zero“ and the Green Schools Project’s Zero Carbon Schools initiative. These are significant stances given that net-zero is the public policy goal.
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Solarpunk Storytelling – Extinction Rebellion is looking for entrants for its first international writing contest, the XR Solarpunk Storytelling Showcase, organised by XR Wordsmiths. It says: “We want to use our collective imagination as a tool against the climate and ecological emergency. Imagination unlocks the impossible and releases it into the realm of ‘possible’. Through radical re-imaginings of the world, we can get closer to creating a future which is positive and healthy for all life.” You need to write a short story of up to 2,500 words. There’s more detail here.
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Flickers of the Future – Global Action Plan and MTV have launched a Flickers of the Future campaign – imagining a positive future for people and planet. This next step in the Flickers journey sees three winning film-makers Amy Harris, Jack Stanley and Bethan Moore sharing 60-second clips of new ideas featuring a more positive and sustainable future with millions of MTV followers. The idea which the MTV audience engages with the most will then be made into a short animation and shared across the MTV channels.
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@RewildingB – For the past six months, @inkcapjournal has been investigating the extent to which local councils in England have embraced the concept of #rewilding, including how they defined rewilding, what they were doing and spending. Here are the findings
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Biodiversity COPout? – A draft UN biodiversity agreement “lacks ambitious and urgency”, say WWF. The plan was released on July 12th by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, following pre-talks for the Biodiversity COP15 summit in Kunming, where the final text will be negotiated. Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating £360bn of harmful environmental government subsidies a year are among the targets in a new draft of a Paris-style UN agreement on biodiversity loss. Not enough though says WWF as Climate Action notes.
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CO2 equivalence – Greenhouse gas emissions from UK farms are about 45.6 million tonnes a year: some 10% of all UK emissions. Only 10% of the emissions are CO2 however, with about 40% being nitrous oxide N2O (from fertilisers), and 50% methane CH4, (mainly from cows). All contribute to global warming, though not equally. Globally, cattle produce around 4.6 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions annually. Some 90% comes out of the front (as burps) and 10% from the back (as flatulence). In a new development, DEFRA has asked government scientists to assess competing technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cattle digestive systems. The findings will be used to introduce what is described as a gold standard for farmers to hit net zero targets by 2050. Lets hope they think about seaweed as we noted back in March.
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A Beluga Cam – July 15th was Arctic Sea Ice Day. It provided an opportunity to draw attention to the ice loss taking place in the Arctic, why it matters, and how we can all help. It was also the official launch of the Beluga Cam from the Churchill River which provides a view c/o Polar Bears International of these gregarious whales that rely on sea ice for their survival.
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Here’s Something to Chew on – Click here for a view across the world at communities that are part of the Eco-schools Less Litter campaign. It is a joint initiative of the Mars Wrigley Foundation and the Foundation for Environmental Education. Since its launch in 2011, the campaign says that it has educated over three million students about the challenges of litter and waste in their communities and “empowered them to become leaders driving sustainability and positive behavioural change.” Phase IV of the Litter Less Campaign was launched in 2019 and is being implemented in 15 countries across five continents through the Eco-Schools and/or Young Reporters for the Environment programmes.
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Farms and Gardens – Care farming now has a permanent presence on the Countryside Classroom website, thanks to the collaboration between Social Farms & Gardens and LEAF Education. The website is a free database of teaching resources, people to ask, and places to visit designed to enable teachers to use food, farming and the natural environment in and out of the classroom.