Educating for Climate Action: A Look at Argentina and the U.S.

From extreme heat waves across the globe, to floods in Pakistan and wildfires in Australia, more and more threats to our planet have emerged in recent years. If the climate records in 2022 are any indication, our very survival will depend on the steps we take today to build a more sustainable, resilient future.

As awareness of the climate crisis grows, so too does an interest among educators and advocates to include environmental issues more intentionally into school curricula. This is the case for both my home country of Argentina and the United States, where I have been living for the past year—and it presents a huge opportunity to prepare the next generation of climate activists to tackle these environmental challenges.

But, what exactly is environmental education?

“Environmental education… is a process that helps individuals, communities, and organizations learn more about the environment; develop skills to investigate their environment; and make intelligent, informed decisions about how they can help take care of it.”
—North American Association for Environmental Education

How are environmental issues currently being integrated into the classroom? In a 2021 report analyzing curricula from 46 countries, UNESCO found that, of all education documents studied, 45 percent had little or no coverage of environmental topics. Further, these classroom materials put a low emphasis on social-emotional and action-based learning. According to the report, action-focused exercises are critical in environmental learning—equipping students with the tools to be both knowledgeable and engaged on climate topics.

These troubling findings prompted UNESCO to issue a call to action of its own, urging countries to move quickly to improve the depth and focus of their environmental education curricula. The silver lining is that many countries are already working on this, as shown by the school projects in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Switzerland awarded the World’s Best School Prize for Environmental Action.

Both in Argentina and in the U.S., organizations, schools, and educators are working to strengthen environmental education in the classroom with projects that benefit their students and serve as examples for others who want to do the same. Below, I outline a few of them.

Cascos Verdes, a nonprofit, is the first institution in Argentina to offer an environmental education program for people with intellectual disabilities. The organization was founded in 2006 by an engineering student who realized no pathways to university-level environmental education existed for people with intellectual disabilities, like his best friend’s brother.

Through partnerships with universities, Cascos Verdes offers students with disabilities the opportunity to take part in a four-year program of environmental education for free, both in-person and online. This way, the program also facilitates their entry into the workforce, a challenge not only in Argentina but also in the United States.

“Universities have an enormous opportunity to be leaders of true inclusion so that any person with disabilities can study without barriers,” said Lucas Puente, Executive Director of Cascos Verdes. “So we are working to go with and promote this paradigm shift.”

Another Argentinian organization paving the way in environmental education is the Escuela Técnica N° 8 Paula Albarracín de Sarmiento, a public school in Buenos Aires, recognized as one of the top 10 World’s Best Schools for Environmental Action. Despite fewer resources, this school has excelled at designing creative environmental education projects that work with and for its community. They transformed a clandestine detention center used by the former military government into a community garden and memorial, while also developing projects that explore the environmental benefits of solar cookers and aquaponic crops.

As the World’s Best Schools jury recognized, “The school is reclaiming this once-feared site and reconnecting it with the community, creating life where before there used to be only death.”

In the U.S., advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have led to the development of more educational resources of all kinds, including those geared toward environmental awareness and action. Remote learning during the COVID pandemic resulted in more digital environmental education tools than ever before. The availability of these resources improves access for children of all backgrounds and ages, although there are still connectivity challenges for many children and their families that need to be addressed.

Among the wide range of ICT resources available for educators, Environmental Education for Kids (EEK!), a website from FIELD Edventures, excels at providing student-oriented interactive multimedia content, games, books, and projects—with an extra section in Spanish and a section for educators.

Open educational resources (OER) work hand-in-hand with ICT. These educational materials released under an open copyright license can be freely updated, shared, and redistributed. By reducing copyright and technical restrictions, OER provides a unique resource for climate-oriented learning, allowing educators to adapt lesson content to address environmental issues or topics that affect their communities. For example, OER Commons, a digital public library and collaboration platform, offers lessons on topics such as the effects of acid rain or the role of bees in the ecosystem that can spark conversation about climate, pollution, and conservation in the classroom.

Although Argentina and the U.S. face very different contexts and resources, educators and organizations in both countries are working daily to meet the growing interest in environmental education. New technologies emerging around the world offer new ways to make environmental education more interactive and accessible. And, community-focused projects can open the doors to more inclusive and collaborative environmental programs for students and community members alike.

Environmental education is key to building a more sustainable, equitable world. By integrating environmental issues into education policy and curricula, we equip future generations with tools and resources to meet the toughest sustainability challenges of tomorrow and thrive.

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