Publication:
Choosing Our Future: Education for Climate Action

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Published
2024-09-04
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2024-08-27
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Education can propel faster and better climate action in two crucial ways. First, education can galvanize behavior change at scale - not just for tomorrow, but also for today. Second, education can unlock skills and innovation to shift economies onto greener trajectories for growth. At the same time, education needs to be protected from climate change. Extreme climate events and temperatures are already eroding hard-won progress on schooling and learning. Climate change is causing school closures, learning losses, and dropouts. These will turn into long-run inter-generational earnings losses putting into jeopardy education’s powerful potential for spurring poverty alleviation and economic growth. Governments can act now to adapt schools for climate change in cost-effective ways. This report outlines new data, evidence, and examples on how countries can harness education to propel climate action. It provides an actionable policy agenda to meet development, education, and climate goals together, recognizing that tackling climate change requires changes to individual beliefs, behaviors, and skills – changes that education is uniquely positioned to catalyze.
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Sabarwal, Shwetlena; Venegas Marin, Sergio; Spivack, Marla; Ambasz, Diego. 2024. Choosing Our Future: Education for Climate Action. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42098 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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