Through CAP, DG Murray supports Eco-Schools to meet the requirements of a new climate change curriculum, and has supported the appointment of a national climate change coordinator to fulfil this objective.
The launch of the CAP- Eco-Schools Partnership took place at Paradise Valley in Pinetown on the 21 August 2008 and was attended by 40 learners and their teachers representing 8 schools.
The initiative is valuable in educating learners on climate change issues and showing the learners tangible methods for improved ways of living and hopefully changing their attitudes towards the environment.
Introducing Eco-Schools
The Eco-Schools Programme was launched in South Africa in 2003. It gives recognition to schools that can show how they have improved the quality of environmental learning and sustainable management in their schools and community. Currently, there are almost 1150 schools registered with the programme. Eco-Schools is an international programme of the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) that originally started in Europe in 1994. About 9 000 schools have earned green Eco-School flags in 50 countries around the world. Over 30 000 schools are registered with the programme, globally with approximately 9 million students and 628 000 teachers involved!
The pilot programme is supported by WWF-SA and the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA), endorsed by the Department of Education and funded by Pareto.
Climate change and Eco-Schools
Now into its 8th year in South Africa, many of the participating schools have started to tackle issues around climate change. In fact schools that received their 5th consecutive flag (international flag) in 2007, were required to place a special focus on climate change for 2008. This theme was continued in 2009, and in 2010 the theme is around biodiversity and climate change - central to the objective of CAP.
CAP has been instrumental in helping to set up a pilot programme with schools in the KZN to focus specifically on the climate change related learning programmes. This initiative also aligns itself well with the UNESCO’s United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD), which the WESSA/ WWF-SA Eco-Schools programme supports through its efforts.
The initial pilot group of schools supported through CAP consisted of around 20 schools that were with the programme for three years or more or schools that had a genuine interest in being part of the climate change learning group. Today Eco-Schools has has expanded the reach of the climate change curriculum to eleven Eco-School nodes across the country, 6 of which are financially supported through the Climate Action Partnership.
Why these schools?
They have a proven record of commitment to learning about the environment, therefore it is fitting that they be the first to benefit from programmes such as the CAP-DG Murray Trust, climate change project. This also applies to their environmental management in their schools as well which makes up part of their requirements with the programme.
Some of these schools (those who achieved their 5th year flag) are obligated to take up the climate change theme for their Eco-Schools award for 2010/11, of which energy is an integral part. Apart from these schools almost all schools that take on Eco-Schools take up the energy theme, which inevitably looks at climate change issues and ways to improve their environmental management.
What does climate change learning involve?
Over the last two years, Eco-Schools through the partnership has developed a number of resources for educating the youth around climate change and biodiversity issues. These include a climate change puzzle, climate change lesson plans for every grade, integrating the use of the Ug cartoon (another CAP project which using the cartoon medium as a communications tool for behaviour change), and supporting the development of the carbon footprint pilot booklet as well as the Handprint booklet series, among other other resources.
Training support workshops involve teachers and learners being introduced to materials and ideas to assist them in integrating climate change into their curriculum and Eco-Schools programmes. Teachers write up their climate change lesson plans that will be made available more widely through Share-Net for teachers across the country.
All teachers and learners will through their efforts be contributing to development of learning support materials around the climate change theme. It is envisioned that these will be published through ShareNet (hard copies and internet based) that will be made available for all schools that have an interest in learning more about Sustainable Living and climate change related activities.
Contact
For further information, please contact national Eco-Schools co-ordinators, Bridget Ringdahl or Caroline Conway-Physick at WESSA on tel (033) 330 3931 ext 111/ 145 or email ecoschools@wessa.co.za.
or
Download Eco-Schools information brochure here (173 KB)
Download some great demonstrations of climate change mitigation in schools:
Rainwater harvesting
Solar cookers
Vegetable garden tunnels
Indigenous gardens
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