For climate education to scale up we need to work harder to convince parents

Dr Miniya Chatterji

This decade is marked by the mounting international regulations and market peer pressure urging companies towards pro-climate business. The looming challenge faced by them all is to find people that are technically skilled to drive this transition.

At Sustain Labs Paris, we work with over 200+ organisations in Asia, Middle East, and Europe. For them, the transition towards ‘net zero’ requires skills, technology and funds to do so, all of which often currently run low. Yet a major onus lies on organisations to recruit a workforce technically skilled in climate action, technological shifts, and structuring financing mechanisms, to support their transition to operating on net zero conditions. The climate education vacuum needs to be filled by schools and universities, especially in climate vulnerable regions.

For example, less than 5,000 people in India are formally trained to adequately cater to the $23 trillion global climate industry opportunities expected until 2030. India and Bangladesh together are expected to attract $ 2.5 trillion worth opportunities related to climate-resilient infrastructure and in India alone, there is a potential to create three million renewable energy jobs by 2030.

In the UAE, the country’s focus on building skills for a net-zero future is driven by UAE’s net-zero emission targets for 2050 and its declaration of 2030 as the year of sustainability. The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment’s “Green Jobs Programme” has also indicated that about 2% of the UAE’s GDP per year in greening the economy would create up to 165,000 new jobs by 2030 in the country. However, in ‘Skills for a net-zero future in the UAE – Recommendations to shape the workforce’, a study published this week by Sustain Labs Paris and GITEX IMPACT, 2 of the top 3 skills deemed relevant for a net-zero future by the sample surveyed, i.e., robotics & AI, and sustainability & climate action, do not feature adequately in the training offered to professionals and in the curriculum offered to university students in the UAE who are currently enrolled.

According to the Sustain Labs Paris and GITEX IMPACT survey, despite sustainability and climate change being the top skills needed for the transition to a net-zero future, a substantial number (44%) among the sample surveyed dedicate only 2-5 hours weekly to sustainability learning and 36% spend less than 2 hours, underlining the need for increased focus on sustainability education.

The education system in most parts of the world does not yet offer a mandatory understanding of our changing climate and ways to mitigate or adapt to it. For the most part, neither in school nor at university are we taught to account for GHGs, conduct impact assessments, understand carbon footprint, waste, energy, hazardous materials and ways to manage them. At best, sustainability is often an optional subject or part of co-curricular activities and student clubs. During the pandemic, we have witnessed the consequences of unpreparedness for disaster. We can not afford to make the same mistake once again and remain unprepared to solve for our changing climate.

In India, we have established the Anant School for Climate Action, the country’s first climate focused educational institution. The Anant School for Climate Action offers a pioneering 4 year undergraduate engineering degree program in climate change, of which applications are open for the 3rd cohort. The Climate School’s research centre The Anant Centre for Sustainability undertakes technical research related to sustainability involving private sector, government, academia and the students. The Anant School for Climate Action all works across schools in India to raise awareness amongst students towards climate action.

This is a model that is scalable across different regions of the world, where schools, universities, research centres, private sector and the government partner to impart climate education. However, the greatest stakeholder for the success of scaling up climate education is my generation – parents of school going students. While the current generation of high school students is probably historically the most aware about the need for climate action, it is my generation that is often the stubborn spoke in the wheel, opting traditional pathways for their wards. For climate education to scale up to match the demand, it is imperative to recognize, convince, and include all the crucial stakeholders towards achieving our common goal.

The writer is founding director, Anant School for Climate Action & CEO, Sustain Labs Paris