Mapping the Two-Way Relationship between Climate Change and Education

In 2015 the international community reaffirmed that quality education is a fundamental human right for all children and foundational for a peaceful, just and sustainable world. Yet the education of tens of millions of children is threatened by climate change and its multifaceted interactions with endemic poverty, conflict, gender discrimination, and diseases.

In sub-Saharan Africa climate change interacts with a precarious schooling environment: 29.8 million children are out of school and more than one-third who begin will not complete primary school. This is particularly true for girls in most regions.

This project will map the relationship between climate change and education in Ghana and Malawi, where the study team has conducted more than 35 years of combined ethnographic research on education.

The mapping approach links daily student and school practices to national policies and international funding streams and provides a gender-responsive, youth-centered analysis of the impacts of climate change on educational experiences and outcomes.

Researchers will map students’ daily life experiences and explore how these experiences and school practices are shaped by and interact with “cross-sector” climate-related concerns (e.g., community, environment, public health, agriculture) and the local, national and international institutions that address them.