Environmental literacy is the key to combat climate change

Published on October 03 , 2020

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Ananya Kamboj

The clock is ticking, and we are running out of time to combat climate change. Education is a prominent factor in creating a greener and healthier world. Young individuals should attain awareness about ongoing malpractices and how one can revoke them. This will ensure a better attitude towards the global emergency. 

Environmental Literacy
Image Source: sustainability.umich.edu

UNESCO identified that education related to climate change is a crucial way to curb the unhealthy behaviour of natural resources. Environmental Literacy includes being aware of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals promoted by the UN, especially the ones that an individual can make on personal and community levels. 

As the UN states, "it is just as important to make progress in areas such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and formulating effective government policies as it is to provide education and training to raise awareness in as wide an audience as possible".

'People should be aware of the concepts concerning the environment'

We must introduce concepts in the education syllabus and talk deeply about them in the learning environment. Concepts like greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable food, water print, carbon footprint, green taxes, green jobs, recycling, deforestation, recycling, renewable energy, etc. should be explained to young individuals. 

Another way of teaching students about the importance of the environment is by conducting various activities that make them care about the environment's health. The teacher can ask them to take care of the plants or practice a few sustainable development activities for a week to create an inherent change in their behaviour.

Other activities like going to a nursery, visiting farms, or learning from the farmers also make the children interested. Children not only absorb the habits of people around them but also make them aware of things that they are doing wrong. When children in the family learn, adults learn as well. 

The role of education is not parallelly proportionate to one's age. It's imperative to teach people even if they are way into their adulthood. There is no age of learning, and hence everyone should be aware of the concepts concerning the environment. The knowledge will help them make decisions from a more smart and sustainable angle.

Be vocal about climate change

It has significantly been analyzed that the government's actions influence the nation widely. Hence, government bodies should be vocal about the urgency of the situation and should help promote their positive activities that everyone can do.

The authoritative bodies should work at various levels and extract help that everyone can do easily. Tasks should be assigned to individuals, communities, society, and nationwide so that everyone feels a connection while performing the tasks. 

We cannot take the climate change lightly, we have slacked off for a long time already, however, we still can start today and save our climate before it slips from our hands.

From young children to adults and aged all need to come together. We all need to fight to protect our earth, one that we won't get back. It's essential to make attitude changes through learning now in order to ensure a healthy environment for us and for our future generation.

(The views expressed in the article are the author’s own. Let Me Breathe neither endorses nor is responsible for them.) 

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