Blessing Bature, Abuja
As the world is frequently faced with intense drought, storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and warming oceans, threatening the essential ingredients of good health such as clean air, safe drinking water and other things necessary for people’s livelihoods in communities, the Development of Educational Action Network ( DEAN) has prescribed innovative climate education design as the best short and long-term measure to fight climate change.
The Executive Director, DEAN Semiye Micheal made the call on Wednesday during a press conference in Abuja, adding that there is no other excellent tool to change the world than education.
According to him, the mandate of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Paris Agreement), to which Nigeria is a signatory to, listed six areas that should be utilized to engage the public in climate change solutions; of which education is the first mechanism mentioned in article 6, he said, adding that the IPCC reports have also supported climate education as a climate response to strengthen societal responses to climate change.
Michael said climate education should be mainstream in our educational curriculum to enable students understand that climate is not just a threat but a reality resulting in social, economic and environmental instability in a country that is already vulnerable. ” Our contextualized resources for the classroom include all these issues and possible solutions so that future generation in Nigeria can be climate champions”
He however applauded the federal government through the ministry of environment for implementing various initiatives in tackling the climate change crisis as demonstrated in their ambitious plan in the NDC and called on ministries of education and environment to forge a beneficial collaboration on this subject for the common good of mankind.
“The federal government should draft a review process that will include climate education in relevant subjects across primary and secondary schools in Nigeria, environmental and green clubs should function across schools which will be duly regularized and finally students should participate in extracurricular activities that will equip them with the knowledge of nature, biodiversity, climate change and environmental stewardship, including environmental and climate literature as part of approved reading literature for pupils and students across schools in Nigeria”, he said.