By Rainier Sielaff, AWC Finland
At the school where I used to teach, each junior chooses an area of interest, finds and works with a mentor and embarks on an individual project, which they then document, craft into a thesis paper and finally present to the school community in the fall of their senior year. From 2018 to 2019, three of my eleventh grade students chose to delve into topics centered around the climate crisis. One researched zero-waste, simultaneously setting out to reach that milestone; another adopted a vegan lifestyle; and the final student looked into the environmental costs of fast fashion.
Projects like these are crucial in promoting climate action, a fact that this year’s Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) recognized by highlighting new educational activities. For almost three decades, world leaders have gathered annually at COP summits to find solutions to climate change. One of the most pivotal conferences took place in Paris in 2015, when 195 member states plus the EU promised to strive towards limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Under this Paris Agreement, the parties committed themselves to developing national plans outlining how much they would reduce their carbon emissions, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and to update these plans every five years. This year, more than 100 heads of state, in addition to tens of thousands of negotiators, government representatives, businesses and citizens, came together in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh, aiming to strengthen their country’s NDC pledges, stabilize greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate our planet’s path to a zero-carbon future by 2050.
Promoting education has featured prominently in COP formal negotiations since 1998. Traditionally, much of this spotlight has shone on the non-profit organization Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE), which supplies resources on climate science, trains youth leaders to advance solutions to the climate crisis through campaigns and facilitates networks for student climate advocates. This year, COP27 launched new initiatives, such as the Climate Education Hub, a multimedia pavilion related to education and climate action. COP27 also hosted panels identifying meaningful grassroots activities around the world, such as the Coalition for Climate Education, which unites over 100 activists and organizations fighting for climate education.
When asked why education was so critical, Kathleen Rogers, President of Earth Day Network, whose education team spoke at one of COP27’s panels, shared the following insight: “Education has the power to revolutionize the world we live in, from the economy to the energy sector to everyday lives, and remains the foundational key to creating a sustainable, equitable and just future. Educators, youth and corporations are all calling for universal climate education to provide a new generation of leaders with the skills and knowledge to ramp up this inevitable sustainable economic revolution. To invest in our planet means investing in climate education.”
Circling back to my eleventh grade students, how did their climate projects fare? The first struggled with how much waste she and her family produced, although they significantly reduced their footprint. The second learned how tough it was to live without meat and dairy in mainstream Germany. In the summer of 2019, a local business magazine published a passionate editorial the third student had written, summing up her project on fast fashion. After describing the responsibility each of us has as a consumer, she ended with the urgent plea that I have since heard echoed by many young people in various guises: “It’s up to us to start thinking differently! We as a society have to promote sustainability by embracing it wholeheartedly.” Where better to start than by encouraging students through educational opportunities?
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