Climate change communication and education around the world: Country Profiles to map global processes

• In Event: Action for Climate Empowerment and Climate Communication

Proposal

There is an urgent need globally for better-quality and more quantity of climate change communication and education (CCE), across K–12, higher education, government, civil society, business, media, and communications. However, we still lack a clear understanding of effective CCE (its quality). At the same time we also lack global benchmarks and targets to support intergovernmental processes that encourage regions and nations to increase CCE across sectors (its quantity).

The MECCE (Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate Communication and Education) Project brings together over 100 leading scholars and agencies, including the IPCC, UNFCCC, and UNESCO to tackle the challenge of quickly advancing CCE globally. Our shared goal is to increase the quality and quantity of CCE to advance global climate literacy and action.
One of the research activities that is supporting our shared goal is the creation of CCE country profiles. The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report and the MECCE Project joined forces to develop 50+ country profiles in order to qualitatively map CCE efforts while acknowledging cultural and regional differences. The profiles are written by consulting publicly available information, primarily on a national level, and are supported by country-specific expert review at the end of the writing process. The first 20 profiles were published in 2021, and 30 more will be published ahead of COP 27 in November 2022.

In addition to helping to close the current gap in understanding of quality CCE, the Country Profiles also help to advance the quantity of CCE provided globally by addressing the fundamental absence of robust cross-national data available for intergovernmental and governmental target-setting and progress. Specifically, the Country Profiles provide an important cross-national baseline for understanding the level and nature of CCE provision by national governments, and the extent and scope of CCE in comparison to best practices. The Country Profiles are a useful tool for countries to learn from other countries, and to help country-level stakeholders assess how their country is doing on various dimensions of CCE provision and planning.

This presentation shares some of the MECCE Project’s findings on climate change policy documents, government websites, and other national level resources used to write the Country Profiles. Those findings include differences between the Global South and Global North countries, inconsistencies in terminology, and the importance of mainstreaming CCE in all relevant policy documents, such as emission-reduction plans and development strategies. The Country Profiles follow six Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) components developed by the UNFCCC (i.e., Primary/ Secondary Education, Higher Education, Training, Public Awareness, Public Participation, Public Access to Information).

The presentation will also include findings on measures used to map CCE across countries and how such measures are useful in advancing CCE globally. Part of those measures stem from a 100-countries analysis of national curricula frameworks to map the state of climate change inclusion in national education systems. Findings show, that only 50% of analyzed countries included climate change in 2021.

Authors

• Marcia Mckenzie, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne

• Aaron Redman