Youth Engagement Panel – The House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee – a cross party group of Members of the House of Lords appointed to consider the environment and climate change – is offering schools and colleges the opportunity to work with the committee and advise on the issues the Committee should look at and the questions it might ask, as part of a youth engagement panel. A small number of schools will be selected for the initial one-year pilot. Although initially a pilot, successful schools will be expected to commit to the youth engagement panel for a period of one year. There are more details here. If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, please contact selcomengagement@parliament.uk The deadline for applications to be received is Wednesday 24th November.
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Sustainability & Climate Change – DfE has announced that a tender will be advertised after Christmas for a delivery partner to take forward the more detailed design and development of the Nature Park and Climate Award with a view to a launch in Autumn 2022. They say that they do not want to duplicate the good work already being done, and that the whole of the education estate should be involved from Early years/primary to University. Time for collaboration.
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Size Matters – The UK’s school estate is only responsible for 1% of the country’s emissions, but this comprises 40% of public sector estate emissions. In terms of physical space, it’s the size of Exmoor National Park.
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Transversal Competences – This is an extract from Finland’s curriculum documentation: “To advance the integration of general upper secondary studies, the National core curriculum for general upper secondary education introduces the idea of transversal competences, which comprise the common objectives of all subjects. The six areas of transversal competences are: (1) well-being competence (2) interaction competence (3) multidisciplinary and creative competence (4) societal competence (5) ethical and environmental competence, and (6) global and cultural competence.
Transversal competences help the students apply in practice the knowledge and skills they learn while studying the various subjects. They refer to cognitive skills and meta skills which lay the foundation for learning and competence as well as the kind of attributes the students need in their studies, work, hobbies, and daily life. They also create the preconditions for acquiring the knowledge and skills which enable the students to cope with change in an increasingly digital and complex world. Here’s an article that discusses how they can be implemented in daily school life.
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COP26 and the Conversation – Here are three features from The Conversation reflecting on COP26. Mary Gagen on what all the numbers mean; Daniel Parsons and Martin Taylor on China, India and coal; and Wim Naudé on the carbon cost of shipping. Many good discussion points here.
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Flagship Award – Congratulations to Lee Jowett and colleagures in Leicester who won an RCE Outstanding Flagship Award for their Carbon Literacy Project which NAEE has been funding. The Award recognises projects and programmes that bridge local and global perspectives on sustainable development, those that engage with transformative learning and research, and initiatives that contribute to community engagement, research & development and capacity development of stakeholders and partners. There were 10 flagship awards (details here) from across the world.
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Ashden Awards – On November 4 Ashden announced its 2021 Award winners: nine pioneering organisations working in low-income countries and the UK showing how they can lower emissions and build fairer societies. You can see more detail of the winners here.
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Hackathon Award – Two Coventry University postgraduate students won the top prize at the Global Sport Sustainability Hackathon run on the fringe of COP26. It was hosted by Sport@COP, an organisation that works to harness the power of sport to inspire climate action globally. Meredith Whiting and Mia Duckers won with their Pick Up + Play idea, which proposed an organisation that works with local and professional sports teams to improve community green spaces such as parks. You can see their presentation here.
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Climate Education Resources – Change the Story offers KS2 resources and hands-on support for teaching about the climate crisis, citizenship and digital competence. The resources set out to guide pupils to explore changes from the past and how they impact on the present. Then, to investigate change makers in the present and how they make change happen. Finally, pupils are guided to create their own stories for the future which address the climate crisis creating compelling visions for the future. Training in digital story-making will be available in 2022.
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Communicate! – Two of the most asked after session recordings from Communicate 2021: On the Road to COP15 and COP26 are now online. You can view In Conversation with Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England and Communicate 2021 keynote – Jeremy Heimans and all other session recordings from September’s conference on the Communicate 2021 playlist. If you would like to look back at sessions from previous Communicate events then check out the Communicate Archive, where there are recordings going as far back as 2008.
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Eco Anxiety – A recent Conversation Weekly podcast features a climate scientist who just updated a clock he created that counts down the seconds until the world reaches 1.5°C of global warming. It also features experts talking about the latest evidence on climate anxiety – what it is, how common it is and what to do about it.
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Future Food – Deep Branch is a carbon dioxide recycling company that uses microorganisms to convert clean CO2 into high-quality products to enable global sustainable animal nutrition. Founded in 2018, in operates in the UK and the Netherlands. Here’s a graphic to illustrate the process.
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Solar Energy Balance – The Explaining Science website has been exploring opportunities for solar energy across the globe. The headline facts are: [i] the Earth receives 173,000 TWh of energy from the Sun – every hour. [ii] humanity uses 163,000 TWh of energy in a year (2000 figures).
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Green Cement – If cement were a country it would have the world’s third highest carbon emissions: some 5bn tonnes; 8% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. No wonder efforts are underway to reduce and perhaps eliminate these emissions from the 30bn tonnes of concrete that is made every year. The Economist has the details.