Q&A: Why greening education is the long-term solution for our planet

That is the core message UNESCO is conveying on World Environment Day as it unveils new guidelines for greening schools and curricula.

A 2021 UNESCO analysis of 100 national curriculum frameworks revealed that nearly half (47%) do not mention climate change. Only one third of teachers felt able to properly explain the effects of climate change in their regions and 70% of the youth surveyed could not describe the broad principles of climate change due to the ineffective way in which it is currently taught. 

The new Green School Quality Standard sets the minimum requirements on how to create a green school, promoting an action-oriented approach focused on school governance, facilities and operation, teaching and learning as well as community engagement. It recommends that at a minimum, all schools set up green governance committees including students, teachers, parents and governors to oversee sustainable management. 

The guidance also calls for special monitoring teams to supervise teacher training, conduct energy, water, food and waste audits, ensure that climate change education is mainstreamed across the curricula, design new lesson plans prioritizing hands-on projects, and build links with the wider community to help students address local environmental issues.

The new Greening Curriculum Guidance is a practical guide endorsed by all members of the Greening Education Partnership. It proposes for the first time ever a collective understanding of what climate change education should consist of and how countries can green their curricula. 

The guidance features detailed expected learning outcomes according to age group, from 5-year-olds and up to over 18-year-olds. It focuses on the importance of promoting active learning, encouraging emotional engagement with the topic and designing a range of hands-on activities.

A new report, Learning to act for people and planet, published by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report and the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education shows that formal education has concentrated on imparting knowledge about environmental issues, rather than driving action, failing to show learners the role they can play in taking climate action. 

The report argues that climate change education cannot rely solely on knowledge transfer but needs to focus on social-emotional, action-oriented learning, which can bring first-hand experiences and are more likely to lead to change. 

A recent assessment of the coverage of climate change in primary education found that only 7% of countries focused on socio-emotional learning, and 27% on behavioural learning, while 67% still focus on cognitive learning. 

The first global data for a new SDG indicator measuring the greening of curricula shows that the world has scored the equivalent of a third-class degree (40/100) in their coverage of green issues in school syllabi and curricula. 

Conducted by UNESCO, the GEM Report and MECCE covering 30 languages and 76 countries so far, the new indicator is being proposed to measure learners’ knowledge and capacity to improve climate change mitigation and adaptation.

• Press release
• Green School Quality Standard
• Greening Curriculum Guidance
• Learning to Act for people and Planet
• Climate change & sustainability in science & social science secondary school curricula 
• More on UNESCO’s work in education for sustainable development