Are we addressing the connections between education and climate change?
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Many people are aware that the World Bank Group, which committed about $20 billion between 2016 and 2020 and oversees operations in over 80 countries, is the main financier of education in the developing world. Many people are also aware that the Bank, with a total investment of $83 billion between 2016 and 2020, is the largest multilateral donor of climate action in developing countries across many sectors.
However, a lot of people are unaware of the complex relationships between the Bank's work on education and climate change. There has been much written about how we might use education to better combat climate change, and those suggestions need to be highlighted frequently, but it's also critical to understand how actions performed now are aiding in the fight against climate change.
1) Increasing and improving research and teaching on the effects of climate change
The program known as the Africa Higher Education Centers of Excellence (ACE) is perhaps the clearest and greatest example. The World Bank has given more than $580 million through the International Development Association (IDA) to 77 centers at 55 universities through a series of programs (ACE I, ACE II, and the First and Second ACE Impact) in support of 20 sub-Saharan African states. The number of students enrolled in postgraduate programs (and some bachelor's degree programs) is around 24,000. With a focus on agriculture, health, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including computer sciences, water and electrical engineering, transport and logistics, and environmental sciences, all of which offer significant insights into climate-related issues, the program is intended to improve the quality and availability of applied research and higher education.For instance, Ghana's ACE in Coastal Resilience (ACECoR) is increasing technical and scientific capacity to create comprehensive solutions to combat coastal degradation. Other fascinating work is being done at research institutes like the CEA for Environment, Health, and Societies (CEA-AGIR) in Senegal, the CEA for Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Sustainable Agriculture (CCBAD) in Côte d'Ivoire, the Water Infrastructure & Sustainable Energy Centre for the Futures (WISE FUTURES) in Tanzania, or the ACE for Climate Smart Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation (Climate SABC) in Ethiopia. These institutes provide courses and research in topics like as dryland resource management, intelligent/sustainable agriculture, air quality, restoring damaged habitats, and climate and biodiversity-related fields.
With a focus on agriculture, health, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including computer sciences, water and electrical engineering, transport and logistics, and environmental sciences—all of which offer significant insights into climate-related issues—the Africa Higher Education Centers of Excellence program aims to improve the quality and availability of applied research and higher education.
2) Developing infrastructure and processes for education that are climate resilient
For instance, elementary schools in Bangladesh are being built or converted to act as cyclone shelters with the help of the World Bank's Multipurpose Disaster Shelters Project, considerably reducing the number of cyclone victims. Through 552 new shelters, 450 renovated shelters, and around 550 kilometers of new rural roads to service the communities and enhance access to shelters, the project is assisting in reducing the vulnerability of the coastal people in Bangladesh to natural disasters.
The project also funds neighborhood-based early warning programs and equips shelters with solar panels and rainwater collection systems. The shelters will offer universal access to better meet the requirements of elderly and persons with disabilities, and they will have nursing mother-friendly rooms.
While there are numerous instances of Bank-financed projects improving the resilience of educational infrastructure to climate-related shocks or ensuring that new structures and tools are more environmentally friendly, the Bank is also putting more of an emphasis on system-level resilience. For instance, the World Bank recently granted a $160 million loan for Turkey in order to strengthen the country's educational system's ability to fairly provide e-learning to school-age children amid the COVID-19 pandemic and other shocks. The effects of climate change, such as rising temperatures that increase the frequency and severity of climate-related risks, such as a disastrous flood in 2019, are particularly harmful to Turkey.
Although the Bank-financed initiative aims to strengthen the educational system's reaction to COVID-19, expanding Turkey's e-learning's reach and resilience will also increase the system's capacity to deal with disruptive climate-related shocks in the future. By the project's conclusion, there will be more than 100,000 virtual classrooms available to accommodate more than 5 million pupils at once. Additionally, the project is looking into how to ensure the e-learning platform can be developed and used in ways that reduce its carbon emissions, which would be a huge potential gain for the environment!
3) Increasing community resistance to the effects of climate change on education
The Democratic Republic of the Congo was one of only a handful of nations that continued to charge for primary education as of the 2019–2020 academic year. For primary education, households had to pay, on average, $65 per year for each child, which was expensive for low-income families. The Emergency Equity and System Strengthening in Education Project will enhance children's access to primary education in 10 provinces, cut school costs for the poorest households, and strengthen the nation's educational system. The project will receive $800 million from the Bank through IDA. Already, an extra 2.5 million kids from underprivileged families have access to education.
What is this's relationship to global warming? Although the relationship may not be obvious at first, it is crucial: by abolishing public primary school fees, low-income households would not have to choose between providing their children with food and an education when faced with climatic shocks like droughts or floods. When faced with climate-related shocks, families and communities should be able to recover more quickly and with less long-term damage to their human capital and well-being.
These instances are aimed to demonstrate the various relationships between climate change and education. Young people are increasingly leading the global discourse on climate change; these instances and outcomes, among many more, serve as a reminder that wise investments in education may also pave the way for a resilient, climate-smart future.
These cases and outcomes, among many others, serve as a reminder that investing wisely in education may also result in a resilient, climate-smart future. Young voices are increasingly leading the global climate discourse.
link source - https://blogs.worldbank.org/climatechange/education-and-climate-change- are-we-addressing-linkages
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