Climate Education Resources

Education is often understood as the primary means of preparing young people to address the climate and nature emergency. Yet there are competing perspectives about what constitutes relevant and responsible climate education. As the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss become more tangible, and projections of possible futures become more dire, many people are calling upon educators to promise a more hopeful future and offer guaranteed solutions.

This kind of climate solutionism is often driven by concern that people will succumb to climate doomism, a fatalistic sense that it is too late to stop climate catastrophe. But while climate education that is grounded in solutionism may be well-intended, it does not align with current realities and thus, does not adequately prepare young people to hold the full weight and complexities of the wicked problems we face, and that they are already feeling.

We believe that relevant and responsible climate education in the global north should seek to go beyond the possibilities offered by either climate solutionism or climate doomism. It should support people, across generations, to develop the stamina and the intellectual, affective, and relational capacities to confront the most challenging aspects of our current predicament. It should equip people to keep moving and learning with and through these difficulties and complexities rather than feeling overwhelmed, immobilized, or seeking quick fixes.

In partnership with the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research collective, and with the support of the Musagetes Foundation, we are working on a wholistic approach to climate education that is critically-engaged, complexity-informed, contextually-relevant and socially and ecologically accountable. For more information, click here.

We have also created a few creative commons (free) resources that you are welcome to experiment with in your context.

Check the OpEds written as part of this collaboration:

See also:

Facing Human Wrongs 2.0 course; ClimateFraud Framework; Moving With Storms Report