Children and climate change: intergenerational adaptation and education

There are currently one billion school aged children around the world, and an overwhelming number of them live in countries grappling with the consequences of a warming planet. For this generation, the climate crisis is a present-day emergency resulting in impairments that will last their entire lives. Climate change is already impacting their health, education, and overall wellbeing, and in turn effecting the prosperity of entire communities and nations. And a lack of education about the solution to global warming, reaching net zero emissions, is a further injustice to current youth fighting for change.
Today’s children are tasked with the monumental challenge of understanding, adapting, and responding to this challenge. Two research projects based at the University of Oxford are building the scaffolding to allow this to happen.
The Children and Climate Initiative is a global research collaboration building evidence to show the relationship between climate change and adverse health outcomes in children, predicting where these impacts will be most acutely felt, and supporting policy makers to mitigate them (https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/children-and-climate-initiative).
The Net Zero Education Agile Research Project is working with the UK Department for Education to build Net Zero education into the school curriculum by learning from secondary school teachers if and how Net Zero is being taught in Key Stage 3 (11-14 year old students) classrooms, and working with a Youth Advisory Board of sixth form students in England. This work is part of the Agile Sprint project ‘How can curriculum designers provide better Net Zero education for the next generation?’ funded by a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC; NE/W004976/1) as part of the Oxford Martin School’s Agile Initiative (https://www.agile-initiative.ox.ac.uk/).
Please join us for an engaging and interactive discussion with representatives from these projects to discuss how the climate is impacting children, how Net Zero can be supported through education, what adaptation measures can be taken, and the vital role that schools play in facilitating that adaptation.
Our panellists include:
Dr Alan Stein, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
Leonardo Ferreira, International Center for Equity in Health, Federal University of Pelotas
Ashima Gulati, The Climate Way
Gordon Carrothers, Trust Lead for Geographies, the Two Counties Trust
Hosts: The Climate and Children Initiative of the Blavatnik School of Government and the Net Zero Education Agile Research Project both of the University of Oxford.
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