This essay identifies a series of challenges faced by education institutions in translating climate education into action and provides recommendations for addressing these challenges. There is an increasing awareness of climate education as a key component of the global agenda for sustainable development. Yet, there is limited understanding of global climate precepts and challenges which impede many key actors, including teachers and students, from promoting the global agenda for climate education1. The transformation of current school systems to fully integrate climate education into curriculums and practice is essential. Such a change will hopefully help future generations to realize sustainable development, through inspiring the next generation to become active participants in forging a more sustainable future for all2.

Climate education has been discussed extensively, yet ways in which students and educators can translate climate education into action remains an issue at education institutions. Following the Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for Sustainable Development3, climate action can be defined as the process of using education and learning, to generate and scale up actions at all levels and within all areas to accelerate progress of climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives. It is therefore the role of educators to arm students with the relevant knowledge required to accelerate the movement towards a sustainable future.

Evidence shows that teaching on ‘responsible consumption’ and ‘the 3Rs – reduce, reuse, and recycle’ through integration into the formal curriculum has delivered poor results in practice4,5. Other themes such as ‘disaster risk management’, which implicitly links to climate change’s adverse effects, have mainly been included in business curriculum overlooking other fields equally relevant in climate education.6 Important study areas such as ‘cleaner production’ and ‘mitigation options’ e.g., dietary change, alternative use of energy and changes in lifestyles and behaviours are perceived as abstract7 or unimportant.

Climate education needs to be taken seriously to prepare students and educators to face pressing climate challenges. In doing so, the international community has embarked on global mandates to “embed education into plans and efforts to address sustainable development and integrat[e] sustainable development into education institutional priorities, curricular and pedagogy”8.

Climate Education and Climate Action: Links and Issues

“Three challenges that prevent both students and educators from engaging in climate action: students’ consumption patterns and behaviours, peer pressure from classmates, and educators’ lack of knowledge on climate change.”

These issues have a strong influence on climate education, thus addressing these explicitly in curriculum has the potential to contribute to climate action.

There is increasing resistance among students to sacrifice unsustainable lifestyles. This is due to the lack of incentives to amend negative behaviour, mainly associated with diet and consumption related to fashion and clothing. Furthermore, the growing gap between school students’ values and the schooling curriculum exacerbates this issue. Educators claim that students do not identify with sustainable lifestyles, which compromises climate action at schools.

As a result, incentives must be created to motivate students to change their unsustainable consumption patterns and behaviours throughout their schooling. While school systems are not responsible for behaviour outside of their walls, they can incentivize behaviours during the school day that encourage sustainable consumption. In doing so, educators and other key actors should encourage students to engage in research through first-hand experiences aimed at fostering sustainability. It is therefore clear that building students’ capacities for climate action such that they reconsider their consumption patterns and drift towards a sustainable lifestyle should be imbedded into both the formal and informal schooling curriculum.

Such incentives for students to unleash their potential and entrepreneurial skills for advancing climate action through addressing consumption can include; climate leadership campaigns, as well as events including clothing swaps and school markets for sustainable products commercialization. Both of which work to reduce climate pressure and amend unsustainable consumption patterns. Educators should encourage students to engage in vocational programs (e.g. recycling, sustainable lifestyles) that address climate action in their transition towards higher education or gainful employment in sustainability-related areas.

The pressure to follow cultural trends including the unsustainable use of technological hardware is becoming an increasing issue for educational institutions. As students are trapped in an ‘unsustainable value system’, thus far climate education has been unable to address the peer pressure to follow unsustainable cultural trends, including the desire for the newest phones, computers, or clothing9.

Creating an identity around sustainable behaviours and integrating innovative methodologies for climate action can assist educators and key actors in addressing these issues with students. For instance, the prevalent use of technology, whilst represented as a social issue, can also serve as an opportunity in the sustainability movement. A case example is ‘OLIO’, a food sharing app similar to tinder. Through connecting neighbours and friends with local shops and cafes, they promote food sharing and the reduction of food waste. As a result, they are using new technologies to encourage reduced consumption for the promotion of a more sustainable future10.

As climate change has been assigned a plethora of definitions and approaches, students can often only relate through their own experiences and contexts.11 Climate change is often perceived as an abstract theme, which is too difficult to act upon. This opinion is principally exacerbated by educators’ limited ability to effectively teach climate education12.

Climate action generally occurs through students inquiring their first-hand experiences and encouraging learners to find their own relevant resolutions. As a result, teachers and role models should apply innovative teaching methodologies. In contrast, teachers still provide students with ‘one size fits all’ solutions, which only widens the gap between obvious climate problems and effective climate education. Further barriers to effective climate education include: the difficulty to apply existing notions of climate change13, lack of funding for both climate and sustainability education14, limited knowledge and training on climate change as far as teaching personnel is concerned15, hierarchy issues that prevent free discussion of climate-related matters that are considered taboo, including family planning (e.g. number of children and increasing carbon emissions)16 and overloaded curriculums.

Regardless of the context, educators must be equipped with essential knowledge to facilitate climate action integration into the curriculum. This will facilitate efficient student capacity-building on climate change in order to, ultimately, forge more sustainable lifestyles. An early step in equipping educators with the right tools to do this would be to examine the abovementioned barriers to climate action within the current curriculum and relevant school systems. This is warranted to better understand the challenges and opportunities arising from the interactions between students, curriculum, school policy, and other impeding factors in the transition from climate education to action.

As school systems don’t exist in a vacuum, educators should be given extra time to engage in professional development opportunities and participate in extracurricular climate initiatives that engage with the broader community. This approach can enable the development of climate action curriculum relevant to students own local climate requirements. For example, exposure to programs such as Sandwatch17 will allow students to closely relate to the issues at hand and promote the significance of climate action. Sandwatch is a volunteer network of schools and a community-based organization, which allows students and community members to learn how to monitor beach environments in the local area. This works to develop awareness regarding the fragility of their coastal environment18.

Furthermore, it is necessary to couple these essential actions with a gradual transformation of the education system, one that challenges traditional teaching structures and practices, which currently still hinder the promotion of climate action19. Such transformation requires heavy investment and resource allocation to identify gaps in climate knowledge and capacity-building. The development of the curriculum in line with both current scientific research and students' contextual experiences20,21 is paramount to fostering a successful transition from climate education to action. To promote locally contextualized climate action, educators and teacher training programs should work with local public, private, and non-profit actors to increase curriculums impact on students within their specific area.

Final Remarks

At present we still face obstacles in the transition to climate action. Hopefully, the recommendations below can facilitate this change, so that both educators and students can learn to work and live in ways that will sustain a healthy planet. The successful integration of climate education into school curriculums is essential in order to inspire the next generation to become active participants in the formation of a more sustainable future. As such, I believe responsibility falls to both the educators and the students to facilitate this progression.

Action needs to be taken as follows: equipping educators with the relevant knowledge required to integrate climate change into the curriculum, fostering educators’ participation in extracurricular climate initiatives that reach the broader community, enabling climate action coordination amongst universities, the private sector and governments and encouraging educators to conduct applied research skills to examine existing barriers in climate action specific to their community.

Furthermore, it is necessary to build students’ capacities in such a way that they alter their consumption patterns and drift towards a sustainable lifestyle, and create incentives for students to unleash their potential for acting on climate change. Likewise, educators and parents also need to encourage students to engage in climate-oriented vocational programs in their transition towards higher education. This will help them access gainful employment in sustainability areas.

1 Mahat et al., 2016, 3R Practices Among Moe Preschool Pupils through the Environmental Education Curriculum. 2 This essay is based on the piece ‘Franco, I; Tapia, R; Tracey, J (2020). SDG 13 - Climate Education: Identifying Challenges and Opportunities to Climate Action. In Franco et al (Eds), Actioning the Global Goals for Local Impact: Towards Sustainability Science to Impact. 3 UNESCO, 2018, Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development. 4 Mahat et al., 2016, 3R Practices Among Moe Preschool Pupils through the Environmental Education Curriculum. 5 Sidiropoulos, 2014, Education for sustainability in business education programs: a question of value. 6 Naoufal, 2014, Peace and Environmental Education for Climate Change: Challenges and Practices in Lebanon; Shaw, 2014, Community practices for disaster risk reduction in Japan; Apronti et al 2015, Education for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR); Herrera, 2016, Disaster risk management in business education.entrepreneurial formation for corporate sustainability; Herrera, 2016, Disaster risk management in business education entrepreneurial formation for corporate sustainability. 7 Colliver, 2017, Education for climate change and a real-world curriculum. 8 Tilbury, 2015, Education for Sustainability. 9 Aleixo et al, 2016, Conceptualization of sustainable higher education institutions, roles, barriers, and challenges for sustainability. 10 OLIO, 2019, The Food Sharing Revolution. 11 Nazir Et al, 2011, Reflections on the Canadian Experience With Education for Climate Change and Sustainable Development; Sidiropoulos, 2014, Education for sustainability in business education programs: a question of value. 12 Pfister et al, 2016, Sustainability / Thomas Pfister, Martin Schweighofer and André Reichel. 13 Aleixo et al, 2016, Conceptualization of sustainable higher education institutions, roles, barriers, and challenges for sustainability. 14 Steele, 2010, Mainstreaming education for sustainability in pre-service teacher education in Australia: enablers and constraints. 15 Madueno et al, 2015, An approach to the implementation of sustainability practices in Spanish universities; Martin et al, 2015, Preservice Teacher Agency Concerning Education for Sustainability (EfS): A Discursive Psychological Approach. 16 Nazir et al, 2011, Reflections on the Canadian Experience With Education for Climate Change and Sustainable Development. 17 More information can be found at http://www.sandwatchfoundation.org/. 18 Sen, A., 1979, Equality of What? The Tanner Lecture on Human Values. 19 Tilbury, D. 2015, Education for Sustainability. 20 Sidiropoulos, 2014, Education for sustainability in business education programs: a question of value. 21 Colliver, 2017, Education for climate change and a real-world curriculum.