Climate Change Education at Universities: elevance and Strategies for Every Discipline

Abstract

Climate change education (CCE) is an essential response to the global threat of an average temperature rise beyond 1.5 degrees C (IPCC 2018). The most recent Global Education Monitoring Report by UNESCO in 2020 emphasizes the impact education has on climate change mitigation and adaptation, yet many countries neither recognize the importance of CCE nor invest in it significantly. This chapter highlights the role of CCE within the higher education sector and offers solutions to the challenge of scaling up CCE by giving examples of how CCE has been and could be integrated into every discipline at university. Historically, universities have focused on climate change science education, however, to achieve the required climate action (decarbonization) on an unprecedented timescale and spatial scale, universities have to focus on integrating climate change mitigation education into all disciplines to enable every student to upscale their own actions and that of their peers, families, as well as current and future employers. Furthermore, as many countries are already exposed to wide-ranging impact from climate change, universities need to integrate climate change adaptation education into their offers. inally, every student needs to have a basic understanding of climate science and the matching climate solutions, which requires universities to embed carbon literacy into all their disciplines. The chapter examines several disciplines that illustrate how CCE could be embedded more widely across university curricula; these include agriculture, biology, business, chemistry, education, environmental science, geography, linguistics, literary studies, physics, and psychology. As successful climate change mitigation depends on holistic, transdisciplinary approaches, insights and approaches from the chosen disciplines that could be integrated into all disciplines in higher education and beyond have been highlighted throughout the chapter. The chapter concludes with strategies on how to integrate CCE on an institutional, national, and international level.