Reimagining Climate Justice Education in Pakistan through Social-Emotional Learning and Empathy

• In Event: Virtual Roundtable Session 3
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Roundtable Discussion on Barriers and Potentials in Using Social-Emotional Learning Towards Climate Justice: A View from South Asia

Proposal

This presentation explores the intersections of climate justice education (CJE), education for sustainable development (ESD), and social-emotional learning (SEL), grounded in the experience of Pakistan. The discussion draws on the work of Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), a leading education organization, and its efforts to embed empathy-driven SEL in climate education through contextually relevant, equity-focused, and youth-centered programming.
The presentation highlights ITA’s innovative educational interventions including the Pakistan Youth Leadership Initiative (PYLI), Mahol Sahelyan, and Kitab-Mahol Gari a mobile outreach program in three cities of Pakistan, which leverage storytelling, experiential learning, and environmental literacy to foster climate awareness, empathy, and agency among children, adolescents and youth. Over the years, these initiatives have demonstrated how SEL can be localized and integrated into formal and informal education settings to promote intergenerational sustainable behaviors and cultivate emotional resilience in the face of climate-related disruptions. By anchoring learning in children’s immediate environments, these models ensure relevance, accessibility, and long-term engagement.
The discussion further draws on the 2022 Floods’ Impact on Young Children research, conducted by Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) in collaboration with ARNEC. This study presents a sobering case study on how climate-induced disasters disrupt early childhood development (ECD) in Pakistan. Focusing on Sindhabad (Karachi-East) a peri urban locality of displaced groups and rural -coastal Thatta (Sindh), the study highlights the compounding effects of food insecurity, disrupted health services, emotional trauma, lack of protection and learning loss among young children and caregivers. Through caregiver surveys, focus groups, and key interviews, the report exposes gaps in language-imagination constructs on climate change and resilience, emergency preparedness, child protection, and ECD services in disaster-prone contexts that have no/low engagement with the multi-sectoral nurturing care framework (NCF). Crucially, it calls for integrating local narratives, responsive caregiving, nutrition, play-based learning, access to birth registration and identity services into disaster response systems, alongside climate-aware education and resilience planning. This study is both a local advocacy tool and a global call for more equitable, child-centered localized climate adaptation strategies.
The approach advocated builds on the understanding that empathy is foundational to transformative learning and climate action. Emphasizing the importance of localized, lived experiences, the presentation argues for the prioritization of creative pedagogies and community-based models that reflect the realities of learners in the Global South. This includes developing learning content that addresses region-specific challenges such as water scarcity, urban pollution, and displacement due to environmental shocks, while promoting peaceful coexistence with the natural world. Moreover, empathy is framed not only as an emotional response but also as a cognitive and ethical tool for mobilizing individual and collective action.
Positioned within a broader South Asian dialogue, the presentation contributes to an ongoing effort to reconceptualize education for climate justice through a more inclusive and holistic lens, - one that values emotional well-being, cultural context, and the active participation of youth as changemakers. It advocates for a paradigm shift in how global education systems understand and operationalize sustainability, empathy, and equity, particularly in climate-vulnerable regions.

Authors

• Baela R Jamil, Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi ITA

• Arooj Khalid, Idara-E-Taleem-O-Aagahi (ITA)