Strengthening climate change awareness in basic education

Joy A. Bengco

THE Department of Education (DepEd) is aiming to strengthen the integration of Climate Change Education (CCE) in the curriculum, in an effort to increase climateliterate students and teachers in the country.

According to DepEd’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Service (DRRMS), learners should be able to understand the necessary competencies of CCE.

The overall goal of the recently concluded 4th National Climate Change Conference (NCCC) is to make the learners and personnel become climate literate and pro-actively leading resilient and sustainable communities.

With curriculum integration, teachers should also have increased competency in CCE, and those competencies should also be strengthened in the media. Moreover, schools and offices should also be able to adapt and mitigate climate change through the planned strengthening of CCE integration.

The intermediate result of this outcome, the DepEd said, is that policies on mitigation and adaptation are institutionalized. Projects related to climate change adaptation and mitigation are also then funded.

Policies include measuring and decreasing carbon footprint, and increasing adaptation to impacts of climate change both passed and monitored. School and community-based research, likewise, should also be supported and considered for planning under the adaptation and mitigation of climate change mentioned earlier.

DepEd has been conducting the NCCC annually since 2017, targeting students and school personnel to be aware of the climate change condition in the country.

With the theme entitled, “Alpas: Channeling youth eco-anxiety to climate action,” the 4th NCCC was eyed to strengthen the discussion of the impacts of climate change on mental health as well as to create actions and solutions to the said problem.

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The author is Teacher III at Francisco Henson Elementary School