Education and Climate Change: The Role of Universities

Climate change is one of the global challenges facing us today and will be even worse in the future if no efforts are made to address it. As illustrated in the title, this book presents the role of universities in implementing strategies to deal with climate change within universities. The first chapter states that universities have an important role in Climate Change Education (CCE) because universities can reach everyone from teachers, entrepreneurs, industry players, and civil society. This book presents how the climate change curriculum is implemented in various places to support students to become aware of climate change so they can take positive actions to overcome problems in their surrounding environments. This book also focuses on discussing the implementation of curriculum innovations in CCE, the roles that students, teachers, and institutions play in creating a better implementation of the CCE curriculum. This book consists of seven chapters written by authors from various backgrounds such as researchers, educators, social activists, and consultants, who explore CCE in various countries. The second chapter presents the innovation of the climate change curriculum to form leaders and provide young people with opportunities to take real action in overcoming the problem of climate change. The authors choose Jordan, Palestine, and Israel as the contexts to explore these issues. The authors also suggest that the implementation of curriculum innovation needs to involves various important parties who play a role in the world of education, such as students, teachers, and institutions. The design of the curriculum also provides direction to shape every aspect to be able to play a role in forming students who can undertake systems thinking and have concern for the environment and take meaningful action to tackle climate change. In this chapter, Rhodes andWang explain in detail how the curriculum implementation process for each party has a role in achieving the goals of the climate change curriculum innovation that has been designed. Meanwhile, the third chapter explores how Guatemala is dealing with climate change and how to provide education to equip its people to adapt to it. This chapter has succeeded in providing solutions in equipping the community by implementing various curricula as a basic reference for teachers in applying environmental awareness to negotiate climate change. Some of the solutions provided include early literacy in Indigenous languages on environmental themes, fostering environmental responsibility, and imitating countries that have the same climate as Guatemala to implement an appropriate curriculum for the Guatemalan context. The fourth chapter describes an educational program using radio in Haiti. The authors explain that the country’s economic condition is still low, causing the quality of education to be uneven and many people are illiterate. Then the authors finally take the right step to choose radio as a means of education about climate change (in Haiti, climate change is present as increased typhoons and severe storms). This chapter explains that this educational radio program is structured in such a way that it can affect the lives of the Haitian people in dealing with climate change.