Choosing Our Future: Education for Climate Action | Report

A World Bank report, Choosing Our Future: Education for Climate Action, assesses the impact of climate change on education in low- and middle-income countries and examines solutions to harness education for climate action.

Findings from the report include:

• Climate change is threatening education outcomes, with the education of 75 million children estimated to have been disrupted by conflict and natural disasters.
• Over 99 per cent of children around the world are exposed to at least one major climate and environmental hazard, shock or stressor,
• Nearly half of the world’s children live in extremely high-risk countries for climate shocks,
• Countries lost, on average, 11 days of instruction per year (or 6 per cent of an academic year) in affected schools due to climate-related school closures.  
• Between January 2022 and June 2024, an estimated 404 million students faced school closures due to extreme weather events.
• Low-income countries lost about 18 days per year (or 10 per cent of an academic year) in affected schools, while high-income countries lost only 2.4 days.
• A low-cost adaptation package for education systems would cost around US$18.51 per student.
• More effective but expensive adaptation packages would cost between US$45.68 – US$101.97 per student.
• Climate action is also slow due to missing skills, with young people wanting to act but, in many cases, lacking the skills to do so.
• There is also a high demand for climate skills among teachers.
• Education, especially at the upper secondary and tertiary levels, can generate green skills at scale to massively propel green transitions. The latter remains “under-used” for green skilling.
• Education directly promotes pro-climate behaviour, and also makes individuals more adaptive to climate change impacts.
• However, pro-climate behaviour change has been hard partly due to the lack of actionable information and/or active misinformation.
• According to the report, for climate action, overall education attainment and quality matter most.
• Climate curriculum must not crowd out foundational skills. Instead, foundational skills can be taught using climate material.
• Once foundational skills are ensured, countries should strengthen STEM outcomes, ensuring marginalised students get access to STEM opportunities.

For the full report, head here.