Climate education still a ‘peripheral topic’ in Southeast Asia’s syllabus amid calls to make it compulsory

BANGKOK: When children step into Green School Bali, their experience is designed to be intimately entwined with nature.

The curriculum here is focused on empowering young people to become community-minded citizens with the skills to make an impact now and into the future. Sustainability is at the heart of the school’s mission and the challenges of climate change take centre stage. The Green School Bali campus uses sustainable materials, renewable energy and has classrooms without walls.

Hundreds of organisations have signed up to a letter to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change , including the influential International Trades Union Confederation and Education International, both representing millions of teachers and workers. “The fact is that only one country in the 20 years that governments have been talking about this under the climate change treaty has grasped the nettle and included climate change education and woven it right across their national curriculum. And that’s Italy,” Nuttall said.

“Technology will get you so far, but what you need is a behavioural change that comes through education. Because you need citizens to be able to hold governments to account for their inspiring actions or their failed decisions,” Nuttall said. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization admits the hurdles are steep in this region, despite some positive signs of a willingness to take education on sustainable development more seriously.

“Already there are deeply embedded inequalities in education where access to equitable education for the poor is a major challenge,” said Faryal Khan, a programme specialist for education, based at UNESCO in Bangkok. Activists there are hoping to persuade regional education departments to include tailored lessons about climate adaptation and broader science about the man-made causes of climate change.

“While countries are making advances, some of the challenges that remain are at the policy level,” Khan said. Sunita Rajakumar, the founder of Climate Governance Malaysia, spends her working days speaking with top company leaders. She says even private businesses are struggling to keep pace.

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