Understanding climate change

By Natasha Parrant

Climate change is a global issue, particularly affecting the younger generation. So, what are Aotearoa schools doing to save the planet, and do tamariki understand the impacts of climate change?

New Zealand Council for Educational Research senior researcher Rachel Bolstad wrote a national overview in 2020 on ‘How can New Zealand schools respond to climate change?’ The country’s required four-yearly National Communication reports to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The last report, as reported by the Ministry for the Environment in 2017, suggests there are opportunities for schools to teach their pupils about climate change and sustainability issues through many year levels of the curriculum. The government also provides resources and funded programmes to encourage schools to educate the youth on climate change. It’s up to individual schools whether they want to take part in focusing their energy on educating pupils on climate change and living sustainably, Rachel stated. School principals and boards of trustees are often in charge of anything to do with school property and how the school will run, Rachel wrote. However, her surveys and interviews showed that some people within the education sector are “looking for clearer signals about the significance of climate change from the top”. One of her interviewees said, “We tend to do a really good job in education of saying, we want to do this, and then it is just left to people to get there on their own. Not all schools are created equal. “And in this instance, that’s not going to be acceptable,” (Secondary educator, cited in Bolstad, 2020b). According to The New Zealand Curriculum Online, one of the curriculum’s resources is on Education for Sustainability (EfS), which is about highlighting the importance of learning about community values, knowledge, and skills to make a positive change in the world.

The website provides the benefits of EfS, celebrates educational success, emphasises teaching strategies, and dives into ways EfS can help schools teach tamariki how to be more sustainable.

This curriculum teaches pupils (ākonga) to care for people and the planet as the environment will affect their lives and future. Teachers and ākonga take charge in fighting climate change to help the many generations to come, as well as Aotearoa’s social, cultural, and ecological systems. A whole-school approach is important because it allows ākonga, teachers, team leaders, and the community to take in the various EfS terms and values and implement this into the school culture. There are EfS progammes, resources like Enviroschools, research projects, climate change guides for schools, Para Kore, and more. Aotearoa New Zealand Education Gazette (Tukutuku Kōrero) wrote an article about ‘The time is now: education’s contribution to a climateresilient future’ on June 2022. This article presents how the government wants to help Aotearoa become a “world leader in climate change action” but first it’s important to educate the youth as “education is contributing to a sustainable future”. Some of Christchurch’s Governors Bay School’s Year 7 and 8 pupils gave a speech to the Christchurch City Council concerned about the impacts of climate change in 2020. “Parents and adults listen but they don’t take very much action to do anything about it because they think; it’s your future, not ours. The work we did made us feel like we had a voice,” one of the pupils Zoe said. Year eight pupil, Theo Vincent from South New Brighton School, also takes action and speaks up. “We can’t help by sitting around and talking – we need to do something. If our class can plant 100 trees, think what could be achieved if all the classes in the world did it.” The conversation around climate change occurred as the councilengaging educator Sian Carvell has been working with 13 Ōtautahi schools in low-lying or coastal areas that may be affected by rising sea levels. “Communities recognise that there’s a way for young people to thrive and flourish rather than be anxious and unable to affect change,” Rachel says. “Schools can connect with Mana Whenua, not with demands or expectations, but to understand what they are doing or want to do in terms of environmental projects and climate adaptation, and ask; how can we support the aspirations of Mana Whenua? “It’s not just about schools but the learner pathway through to work and further study with a coherent and systematic approach needed to support transitions.” Along with this, tamariki are protesting, doing presentations, gardening, learning about various environmentally-friendly initiatives and are combating climate change.

“We can’t help by sitting around and talking – we need to do something. If our class can plant 100 trees, think what could be achieved if all the classes in the world did it.”