Can education for climate action bring a positive change?

As temperatures soar and floods ravage communities in Mozambique, young people are not only threatened physically and economically, they are also grappling with an invisible enemy – climate anxiety. This anxiety isn't just about extreme weather; it's about an uncertain future.

In interviews, students told us they worry that “some islands will cease to exist” and that “adults don’t understand.” One student said: “My mother believes that cyclones are a great snake that blows when she passes. I explain to her that cyclones are due to climatic phenomena, and that there are things we can do.”

Mozambique is not an exception. Most adolescents around the world are experiencing deep anxiety about climate change. Eighty-three percent of youth surveyed in eight low- and middle-income countries (Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, India, Angola, Tanzania, Colombia, Senegal, and China) report that climate change makes them terrified about the future.

These young people are eager to learn more about climate change and take action to help, but many are not prepared with the knowledge and skills to do so. Nearly 88% of secondary school students in Bangladesh want to do something about climate change, but just 32% can answer basic questions about climate change correctly.

A new World Bank report, Choosing our Future: Education for Climate Action, uses new data and analysis to understand the role education can play in responding to climate change, as well as the challenges climate change poses to education systems. It explores how education can help propel green transitions by addressing the information, knowledge, and skills gaps that hinder climate action, as well as the steps countries can take to adapt education systems to a changing climate.

As the new report shows, education has a key role to play in addressing climate change. It can combat misinformation and fill gaps in knowledge on climate challenges and solutions, a persistent problem. For example, only 7 percent of Ugandan Grade 8 students can answer a set of 6 basic climate change questions correctly. Education can solve this. It is the single strongest predictor of climate awareness. Each additional year of schooling increases climate awareness by 8.6 percent, and the effect is larger in higher quality education systems.

Education also has a vital role to play in fostering the skills needed for green transitions. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills associated with “traditional” green sectors, like energy, are critical, but analysis in the report shows that any job in any sector can become greener with the right set of skills. Moreover, green skills are increasingly demanded across a range of industries. In Brazil, for example, 25% of the skills demanded in online ads for jobs in the food and beverage industry are green skills like recycling and waste management.

Building climate specific knowledge and green skills requires solid mastery of the basics. An investment in foundational skills is an investment in climate action.

Rather than crowding out foundational skills, climate topics should be embedded in foundational lessons. This can be done by building climate curricula into existing topics, in ways that are understandable, accessible, and draw on local knowledge. For example, reading lessons can include examples of the benefits of preserving forests and math lessons can integrate lessons on temperature and sea level changes. Integrated classroom lessons can be supplemented with activities that integrate local knowledge and practical skills. In Morocco, an estimated six million students have participated in the One Student, One Tree, One School, One Forest project, learning about the environment by planting seeds and cuttings in their communities.

Governments have an important role to play. First by investing in quality foundational learning, alongside climate education. Second, by increasing the number of students who study STEM subjects, especially women and students from marginalized groups. Third, by recognizing that not all green skills are the same as STEM skills.

STEM skills are essential in the sectors that will be key to the transition and require deep changes in practices and technologies, like agriculture or energy. But any job can contribute to a green transition if workers have the right set of skills. Green skills demand is changing rapidly and jobs in diverse sectors are becoming greener with the evolution of tasks and skills. Governments should focus on improving information flows between employers and students and on increasing flexibility between academic and vocational studies. This can help young people to make informed decisions and respond to evolution in the labor market.

These investments will only pay off if education outcomes are protected from the impacts of climate change. As high temperatures and natural disasters become more common, schools face longer and more frequent closures, with each missed day setting back children's educational progress.

Even when schools do not close, increasing heat erodes children’s learning. Adaptation investments such as planting trees and installing fans can head off these effects, and estimates in our report show that there are cost-effective options, as low as a one-time investment of US $18.51 per student. Cost-effective adaptation options explored in the report include solutions for temperature control, infrastructure resilience, remote learning during school closures and teacher training. The first two will help reduce the likelihood of climate-related school closures and all four will help minimize climate-related learning losses.

Youth have been at the forefront of climate activism, because they have the most at stake in the green transition. Education has an important role to play in facilitating and speeding that transition, and policy makers owe it to them to leverage education for climate action.