Unesco GEM report challenges education’s role in climate change, advocates for global reform
- A new report is challenging the assumption that more education automatically leads to better climate outcomes, with experts calling for a shift in pedagogical approaches to drive climate action
It is an almost universally accepted assumption that the more educated individuals and societies are, the better. However, a new report is challenging conventional wisdom and asking serious questions about how children are taught around the world.
The study, “Learning to Act for People and Planet”, co-authored by the Unesco Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report and the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project, states that “higher levels of educational attainment are fuelling climate change”.
The authors of the report reached this conclusion based on the fact that countries with higher education levels tend to have higher income and consumption levels and thus generate higher greenhouse gas emissions per capita.
“This calls into question education systems, which have privileged an individualistic approach and have underemphasised the need for learners to live responsibly and respectfully on the planet,” states the report. “Rapid growth in educational attainment levels, and the resulting growth in economic activity, is expected to result in a 5 to 25 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2100, depending on the region.”
Despite its attention-grabbing headlines, the report does not advocate a policy of primitivism and a return to more basic education. Rather, it acknowledges that the “relationship between education and climate change knowledge, attitudes and behaviours is complex” and that a simple focus on educational achievement is “insufficient”.
“Our main takeaway focuses on education not as the victim but the solution to empower us all to tackle climate change,” explains Priyadarshani Joshi, senior research officer at the GEM Report. “We need to … ensure that there is a major shift in how we learn and what we learn.
“Better education can improve one’s critical understanding of what is happening with the climate. However, more pressing is the problem that more formal education does not necessarily lead to taking more climate action.”
