Climate Justice and Education

As COP30, the UN summit on climate change, launches this week, we’re excited to share this excellent and informative paper on The Scottish Government-funded Climate Just Communities (CJC) Programme. Read what works for climate justice – namely involving from the start the people most affected, as in Link Education International’s and Link Community Development Malawi’s work on Resilient Schools with DAI. Don’t miss our case study on Page 13.

Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate disasters, due to low adaptive capacity and existing development challenges, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Africa also bears an increasing proportion of the global vulnerable population.

After a climate event, children struggle to learn, miss school or drop out completely for many reasons: forced migration or displacement; increased sickness (e.g. malnutrition in droughts or diarrhea after floods); reduced funds for school due to disrupted family incomes; routes to school being blocked or school buildings being damaged or repurposed.

Girls and children with disabilities are disproportionately affected as boys’ education is often prioritised. The Brookings Institute finds that educational attainment, academic performance, and school attendance is reduced for children who experience climate shocks. 

In rural African schools, there is often a lack of information on the most urgent climate risks, as well as inadequate knowledge on how to effectively address them. This means that schools are unable to build climate-related issues into their planning and cannot access the resources they need from local government to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Link’s Resilient Schools programme is changing that. By supporting schools and communities to work together, we are preparing to mitigate climate disasters and keep all children learning.

“In the past we had no direction. Now we know what to do in times of danger.” Headteacher

While climate change disrupts access to education, education itself provides a critical opportunity to address climate change now and mitigate its future impacts. Education plays a vital role in equipping young people with the required knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviours to successfully adapt and respond to the climate crisis.  Girls’ education is particularly important in addressing climate change – for every additional year of girls’ schooling on average, a country’s level of climate resilience is improved.

Climate Resilient Schools gives children, teachers and their communities the tools to understand the local impact of climate change and extreme weather, and take action. Murals painted on school walls inform communities about climate risks and what they can do. In Disaster Risk Management Clubs students write poems, plays and songs to express their concerns and inspire action. Participatory Hazard Mapping involves whole communities in understanding climate risks, especially for people with disabilities and others who are often marginalised. Creating Green School Improvement Plans gives everyone a voice in climate-resilient school planning and a platform to hold local government accountable for protecting education for all during emergencies.