More and More Students Worldwide Learn About Climate Change – Sometimes on a Boat

Schools around the world are beginning to implement climate education into their curriculum, following a global movement urging for students to be taught about the impacts of global warming.

Bangladesh, for example, is teaching students about climate change on twenty school boats even during monsoon season, in a project aimed at keeping students in classes despite the weather to raise awareness on the global warming impacts around them. The curriculum applies to students between five and eleven years old, and is based on water and the environment, including essential information such as how to farm more sustainably.

“They are actually standing on the ground zero of climate change,” says Mohammed Rezwan, executive director of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a Dhaka-based non-profit group which runs the project. “They are the future citizens. If we provide them with timely education on climate and how to survive the present challenges and prepare them for future, bigger, challenges then actually they will be able to adapt to the changing climate.”

This project is one of many around the world calling on schools to educate students on climate change. UNESCO has marked education as key to tackling climate change, and countries are responding: Italy became the first country last year to make climate change education mandatory, and New Zealand introduced climate change to its curriculum in January.