Global Concerns in Climate Change Education and Capacity Building

Climate change is no longer just a scientific concern – it is a global policy emergency that demands an equally global educational response. Governments, international organizations, and educators worldwide have come to recognize that addressing climate change effectively requires more than technology or policy alone. It requires informed citizens, trained professionals, and institutions equipped to act. This understanding has steadily shaped the international agenda, leading to a series of agreements, programs, and development goals that place education and capacity building at the heart of climate action.

International agreements and their role in climate education 🔗

The international community’s recognition of climate education as a policy priority did not happen overnight. It emerged gradually through landmark agreements, beginning with the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in December 1997 at the third Conference of the Parties (COP3) in Kyoto, Japan. The Protocol was designed to commit industrialized nations to measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But beyond emissions targets, it also carried a significant mandate for education.

Article 10 of the Kyoto Protocol explicitly calls on all parties to develop and implement education and training programs, strengthen national capacity building – particularly in human and institutional capacities – and facilitate public awareness of and access to information on climate change. This was a clear signal that scientific and technical knowledge alone was insufficient; changing public behavior and building institutional expertise were just as critical to meeting climate goals.

The Marrakech Accords and a framework for capacity building 🔗

Building on the Kyoto Protocol, the Marrakech Accords – adopted at COP7 in November 2001 – went further by establishing a concrete operational framework for capacity building. These accords recognized that developing countries and economies in transition needed specific, country-driven support to meet their obligations under the Convention and to participate effectively in the Kyoto Protocol process.

The Accords established that capacity building must be country-driven, reflecting each nation’s particular sustainable development priorities and existing institutional capacities. They also established the principle of “learning by doing” – an approach that favored hands-on, practical training and demonstration projects over top-down instruction. Annex II parties (wealthier, industrialized nations) were assigned the responsibility of coordinating and supporting this capacity-building framework for developing countries, while south-south cooperation among developing nations was explicitly encouraged.

The Marrakech Accords also proposed a framework for technology transfer, aiming to increase access to environmentally sound technologies alongside the human expertise needed to deploy them. Taken together, the Kyoto Protocol and the Marrakech Accords established that education, awareness, and institutional capacity were not peripheral to international climate policy – they were foundational to it.

UNESCO’s leadership in climate change education 🔗

When international agreements called for climate education, it was UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – that stepped forward as the lead UN agency to deliver it. UNESCO positioned climate change education as an entry point for promoting the principles and practice of sustainable development, responding to the growing consensus that education held an untapped potential to combat climate change.

The CCESD programme 🔗

In 2010, UNESCO formally launched the Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development (CCESD) programme. The CCESD aims to help people understand climate change by expanding education activities through formal and non-formal channels, including media, networking, and partnerships. It is grounded in the holistic framework of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which brings together environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability rather than treating climate change as an isolated scientific topic.

The programme has three core priorities: strengthening countries’ capacity to deliver quality climate change education at the secondary school level; encouraging innovative teaching approaches that integrate climate content across subject areas; and raising broader public awareness through non-formal education and media engagement. UNESCO implemented country-level CCESD programmes across more than eleven nations, including Guyana, Mauritius, South Africa, Tuvalu, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cuba, Mongolia, Nepal, and the Philippines, each tailored to local needs, curricula, and institutional realities.

Regional engagement and teacher training 🔗

UNESCO’s approach has been deliberately regional as well as national. Expert meetings were organized in Small Island Developing States, Africa, and Asia and the Pacific, each bringing together roughly 100 experts to develop regionally specific recommendations on adapting education systems to climate change. These meetings produced actionable guidance that fed into global forums, including the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development.

One of UNESCO’s most notable contributions was the development of an online course for secondary teachers on CCESD – the first of its kind globally. The course features a series of six-day programs that equip teachers with the knowledge and methods to explain the causes and consequences of climate change, and to facilitate learning on mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction across multiple subject areas, from social studies and ethics to economics and political science. Teacher education institutions can also use the course for pre-service and in-service training.

UNESCO’s CCESD framework goes beyond conveying scientific facts – it aims to produce a deeper personal and societal transformation, reshaping how learners understand their relationship with the natural world and motivating them to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and advocate for systemic change. This is climate literacy not just as information transfer, but as a foundation for civic action.

The role of the Sustainable Development Goals in climate education 🔗

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a framework of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Climate action sits at the center of this agenda under SDG 13, and embedded within it is an explicit commitment to education and capacity building as tools for climate response.

SDG 13 and its education-specific targets 🔗

SDG 13 calls on nations to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Its five targets address a range of issues, from disaster resilience and policy integration to climate finance. But it is Target 13.3 that is most directly relevant to education: it calls on all countries to improve education, awareness-raising, and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning.

Two key indicators track progress under Target 13.3. The first measures the extent to which global citizenship education and education for sustainable development are mainstreamed into national education policies, curricula, teacher training, and student assessment. The second counts the number of countries that have taken steps to strengthen institutional and individual capacity for implementing climate adaptation, mitigation, and technology transfer actions. Together, these indicators push governments to move beyond policy declarations and embed climate education into their actual education systems.

Target 13.b: Prioritizing the most vulnerable 🔗

SDG 13 also includes Target 13.b, which specifically calls for mechanisms to raise capacity for effective climate change planning and management in the least developed countries and small island developing states, with particular attention to women, youth, and marginalized communities. This target acknowledges a fundamental injustice: the countries least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions are often the most vulnerable to climate impacts and the least equipped – institutionally and financially – to respond.

Progress under SDG 13’s education targets has been uneven. The 2023 SDG Report found that nearly half of national curriculum frameworks do not mention climate change, and only about one-third of teachers feel capable of effectively explaining its effects to students. These gaps underline the continuing gap between international commitments and real-world implementation – and the urgency of strengthening climate education at every level of formal schooling.

How SDG 13 connects with other goals 🔗

Climate education under SDG 13 does not operate in isolation. It is closely linked to SDG 4 (Quality Education), which calls for inclusive and equitable education, and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals), which emphasizes international cooperation and knowledge sharing. SDG 13 and SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) are also described by the UN as closely related and complementary – building public understanding of renewable energy and sustainable consumption is part of the same educational mission. This interconnection means that progress on climate education has ripple effects across the entire sustainable development agenda.

Why this global framework matters 🔗

What emerges from the Kyoto Protocol, the Marrakech Accords, UNESCO’s CCESD programme, and the SDG framework is a coherent – if still incomplete – global architecture for climate education and capacity building. Each component reinforces the others. International agreements create the political mandate; UNESCO translates that mandate into programs and tools for schools, teachers, and governments; and the SDGs provide the accountability framework that tracks whether countries are actually delivering on their commitments.

The consistent message across all three pillars is that climate change cannot be addressed by technology and policy alone. Without an educated public, without trained teachers, without institutions capable of planning and managing climate responses, even the best policies will fail to take hold. Capacity building is not a supporting element of climate action – it is a precondition for it.

Critically, this global framework also recognizes that educational needs differ widely between countries. A small island nation facing existential sea-level rise has different priorities than an emerging economy managing rapid industrialization. The Marrakech Accords’ insistence on country-driven, context-specific capacity building – and SDG 13.b’s focus on the most vulnerable – reflects this understanding. Effective climate education must be globally coordinated but locally grounded.

What do you think? Given that nearly half of national curricula still do not mention climate change, what changes would be most effective in integrating climate education into school systems – updating teacher training, revising national curricula, or something else entirely? And considering the emphasis that both the Marrakech Accords and SDG 13 place on supporting the least developed countries, do you think wealthier nations are doing enough to build climate education capacity where it is needed most?

References

1. https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol
2. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf
3. https://unfccc.int/cop7/documents/accords_draft.pdf
4. https://www.preventionweb.net/publication/marrakesh-accords-marrakesh-declaration
5. https://www.fao.org/4/ac836e/AC836E04.htm
6. https://en.unesco.org/news/climate-change-education-sustainable-development-ccesd
7. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/33084
8. https://unfccc.int/files/documentation/submissions_from_non-party_stakeholders/application/pdf/579.pdf
9. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/climate-change-education-sustainable-development-asia-and-pacific-report-and
10. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/new-first-online-climate-change-education-course-teachers
11. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000219752
12. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-change/
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_13
14. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg13
15. https://sdgs.un.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/CN_EGM%20for%20SDG13%20at%202024%20HLPF_as%20of%2027%20Feb.pdf