TACC Vision Statement on Climate Education

Version 1 a)

This statement is, in part, a response to the often vacillating official positions on climate education
reported in the news media, but goes much further. Rather than asking how to fit climate change
knowledge into existing educational frameworks, we ask what the crisis demands we do in the
sphere of education. Instead of addressing specific failings such as dropping a particular subtopic
in a certain syllabus, we outline below why good climate education is necessary, and what its key
features and outcomes ought to be. Various curricula, policy decisions and frameworks on climate
education can therefore be judged by these criteria. This document is concerned with climate
education from primary school through undergraduate college. This means that each discipline, at
every level should make relevant adjustments, adaptations and expansions to the perspective
presented in this document. It is our hope that formal and informal educators and activists as well
as administrators and education policy makers will find this document helpful. This is a Vision
Document, not intended to provide pathways to change, but to start a discussion from which such
pathways might emerge in different contexts. This document is a work in progress intended
to open a conversation on climate education. This is Version 1 a).

The Necessity of Meaningful Climate Education

In summer, 2024, Northern India and several parts of the world experienced a record-breaking
heatwave resulting in the deaths of thousands in India and worldwide. The climate emergency is
already here. Climate scientists report a fast-unfolding disaster, from the unprecedented rapid
melting of the polar icecaps to sea level rise, extreme weather including heat waves and floods,
food and water insecurity, species extinction and the possibility of new diseases.

How are young people to learn to live with energy and resolve in such a world? What kind of
meaningful work and life will be available to them in the coming decades? WIll the education they
have received equip them to meet the challenge of the climate crisis and the ecological
emergency of which it is a part? What is the education that is needed for young people at this
critical stage of planetary history?

Despite well-established basic science and evidence accumulating since at least the 1970s, no
meaningful (efficacious and just) action on the climate crisis has yet been taken. Instead,
corporations have quickly adapted to the language of environmental responsibility; there is talk of
ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance), net zero accounting 1, carbon capture and storage
and carbon trading 2. These appear to address the problem of extractive production mechanisms 3
while shying away from the central questions of whose extraction, how much, by whom, for what
purpose and in whose interest, and whether they actually work. Young people, exploited classes
and marginalized communities 4 everywhere are inheriting a world hurtling toward a disaster that
they didn’t create. They face a future in which basic human necessities - clean air, water, food,
sanitation/waste disposal, energy, clothing, housing, jobs, health, education, a stable climate -
 will be increasingly scarce, and the problem of waste and pollution even more acute. Thus, we
face a polycrisis 5 of which the climate crisis is a crucial part. Given the continuing inequity in
which only a few enjoy highly resource intensive standards of living which are problematic
because they are premised on unecological, unsustainable practices and thus are a significant
part of the climate crisis. Such standards of living are only made possible in a globally inequitable
society. Yet, they remain an aspiration for most people, for whom they are increasingly out of
reach. The most marginalized are also the most vulnerable to climatic impacts. Thus, for most on
the planet, the climate crisis is centrally a matter of justice, including intergenerational justice.

These problems are particularly acute in the Indian context. It is therefore imperative that we
design climate education to both inform and empower students so that they can be prepared for
the changes that are upon us, and take effective and ethical action toward a better world.

What should students get from climate education?

Meaningful education should help create citizens who can think critically and ethically, question
conventional ways of thinking, understand and contextualize current problems and issues, and
collectively contribute their knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the world. These are
essential public service aspects of education. Such an education should, therefore, encourage the
curiosity, energy and creativity of students, inculcate a joy of learning, and innoculate them
against misinformation. Further, it must introduce them to effective and just tactics and strategies
practiced by (for example) people’s movements that continue to confront entrenched power
hierarchies and the status quo, and enable them to challenge the status quo.

Relatedly, an effective climate education should help envision and train students for new kinds of
jobs, such as those in the renewable energy sector, construction and energy efficiency,
public infrastructure, lean freight 6 and transit and climate services, as well as jobs we
couldn’t have imagined earlier, such as restitution-inspired natural habitat restoration and
management (where restitution is understood as “a collaboration with nature involving collective
work through which individuals also achieve and practise human development."). In addition, it

1
Net Zero refers to anthropogenic removals of greenhouse gases such that they equal emissions in
a given period (that is, equal rates of emission and removal); however, as the article in the
embedded link explains, net zero is being misused as "burn now, pay later."
2
The buying and selling of credits that permit a company or other entity to emit a certain amount of
carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases.
3
Systems of production that extract non-renewable resources from Nature such as iron ore, lithium
ore and coal, without regard for the needs of future generations.
4
Groups of people who suffer discrimination and do not have equal access to opportunities and
resources enjoyed by other groups in society.
5
a complex of interrelated social-environmental problems. Thus, apart from the climate crisis we
also have crises based on the Planetary or Earth System Boundaries framework (further down in this
document) as well as crises of social inequality, war and conflict, hunger and poverty, to name a few.
6
Lean freight refers to increasing efficiency and reducing waste in goods and services production
and distribution in supply chains.
 should build their capacity for preparedness and resiliency with regard to climatic impacts, such
as extreme weather and its consequences.

The question then becomes: how do we design climate education - and indeed, all education -
that responds intelligently and ethically to the challenges we face? Rather than bandaid
‘improvements’ to the old educational frameworks that are part of the problem, we should be
imagining, designing, and putting in place educational systems that are warranted by the crises
we face. What kind of education would do justice to students, society and the climate problem?

What a meaningful climate education must do

1. It must be holistic and inter/transdisciplinary since the climate crisis spans a

multitude of conventional disciplines from the sciences to the social sciences and
humanities. Research shows that focusing solely on the science of climate change is not
effective and can be counter-productive. However, understanding the science is
necessary.
Specifically:

a) It must provide a conceptual scaffolding to ensure a comprehensive

understanding of basic climate science that allows students to integrate new
information and innoculates against misinformation. This includes the role of
greenhouse gases 7 and the greenhouse effect, fossil fuels and the carbon cycle,
the role of energy in society, the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, and
an understanding of current and future climatic impacts as well as those of
the polycrisis in general, including the possibility of sudden, nonlinear changes.
It must connect global climate change to climatic impacts and projections for the
Indian subcontinent.
b) It must be systems-based, recognizing the features of complex systems 8 in
nature and society, and clarifying the importance of relationships within and
between natural and human systems; it must include understanding of key
process, cycles, and natural boundaries, thresholds and tipping points such
as in Planetary or Earth System Boundaries and their interactions, including

7
Greenhouse gases are atmospheric gases that 'trap' heat in Earth's atmosphere, or more
accurately, slow down the energy per second leaving Earth in the form of heat waves ('longwave
radiation)'. The primary greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, which accounts for around 80% of the
greenhouse effect. Others include methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour.
8
Complex systems are defined in different ways, but among their key features are: relationships
between parts of the system are often nonlinear and can change, which in turn changes the behavior
and function of the parts; small changes in one part of the system can cascade through the system
as a whole and cause the entire system to disproportionately and sometimes suddenly shift its state;
complex systems have interacting feedback loops - multiple destabilizing feedbacks can effect
system change; complex systems have adaptive capacity but can also be subject to cascade failures
due to the intense connectivity between parts. Examples include: human nervous and endocrine
systems, human social networks, global financial system, climate and weather systems.
 critiques and critical reviews of these developing concepts. Especially at higher
education levels, problems of language, terminology and perspective arise when
working across disciplines. A systems approach should acknowledge and try to
address this issue as well.
c) It must make clear the relationship between the climate crisis and other
social-environmental crises such as species mass extinction and nitrogen
cycle imbalance so that students can understand the climate problem as a
crucial component and driver of a polycrisis (a set of interrelated, embedded
social-environmental problems) that includes the violation of six of the nine so-far
defined interdependent Planetary or Earth System boundaries.

2. It must foreground justice and critique the current consumerist socio-economic

system which is at the root of the climate crisis. Specifically:

a) It must enable students to recognize that climate change is the logical outcome of a
dominant socio-economic system (socialist as well as capitalist) both based on
exploitation of humans and the rest of nature. Despite this system’s image as the
epitome of human development, it needs to be understood as inherently extractive and
unethical in its operation over the last five hundred years, built through colonisation and
later globalized industrialisation across the ideological spectrum. In India this requires
an understanding of the forces and relations of production, distribution and
consumption 9, with the embedded concerns of caste and gender10. The role of social
movements in climate action must be included; a recent report indicates that, for
example, Indigenous peoples’ resistance the world over cumulatively has prevented
carbon emissions equivalent to a quarter of the annual emissions of the U.S. and
Canada by slowing or stopping greenhouse-gas polluting projects. See also, Movements
Shaping Climate Futures.
b) In an age of extreme greenwashing by governments and corporations, such an
education must enable students to think critically and ethically about proposed solutions,

9
In classical political economy ‘forces of production’ denote the means (raw materials, technology and
labour) by which goods and commodities are produced; relations of production are the property and work
arrangements making production possible; forces and relations of distribution combine to allocate goods
within society; consumption relations use goods in response to social needs or marketized wants.
10
Caste is a birth-based hierarchical status-ordering manifest in social notions of purity and pollution,
occupation, marriage and food rules, social and economic rights. Gender refers to socially construed
norms of behaviour, interaction and control of men, women and nonbinary people. Both caste and gender
are closely entangled in class relations of production, distribution and consumption. Crudely, low castes
tend to be workers and high castes propertied. Across classes women are responsible for unpaid
biologically and socially reproductive work and are subordinate to men in the ownership of property and
returns to work.
 so they may distinguish between effective engagement with the crisis and false
‘solutioneering’ 11. Students need to recognize that solutions cannot be solely
technological but must involve equitable and just social and political change; that the
socio-economic-legal-ecological context of technology matters. In this context, learning
about the impact of vast energy transitions that are currently underway without public
consultation and debate, and emphasizing the need for a just transition focused on the
Indian context, is crucial.
c) Such an education must challenge the typically unquestioned divisions upon which
our current economic (and therefore educational) system are founded: divisions between
the individual and society (including but not limited to relations of caste, religion, class
and gender), nature and culture/society, reasoning, thinking and feeling, body and the
mind. Students must learn to recognize the inadequacy of the dominant social
paradigm 12 of industrialized societies as grossly unfit for engaging with the climate crisis;
and thereby, to understand, and critically examine and derive lessons from other ways
of knowing, such as Indigenous knowledge systems 13, which, through an emphasis on
reciprocity, responsibility and mutual care, can potentially provide inspiration toward
revitalized paradigms and value systems that serve humankind and the rest of Nature
for the wellbeing of all. It is important to include learning from ongoing grassroots
movements and civil society initiatives that experiment with alternatives including
participatory democracy, such as the Vikalp Sangam project, Radical Ecological
Democracy and PARI.

11
The term 'solutioneering' is here used to refer to the deluge of technocentric 'solutions' to climate
change that are being proposed without attention to the following: that they emerge from the same
socio-economic system that caused the polycrisis and therefore seek to preserve the current power
hierarchy; that they do not acknowledge the complex entanglements among and between Earth
systems and human societies; that they generally ignore or pay lip service to issues of justice and
power, often requiring the same or greater level of exploitation of humans and destruction of the
nonhuman world. See for example [Link]

12
For the last two hundred years or so, the dominant view has been that Science's way of knowing,
having yielded knowledge about nature that enabled the generation of new technologies, is the only
form of knowledge worth cultivating. Other ways of knowing that relate to emotions and experience
have spawned a great deal of knowledge in human civilisations around the world. Recently, there is
increasing acknowledgement among scientists of the value of other ways of knowing, especially in
the context of climate change.
13
These are knowledge systems founded through Indigenous peoples’ interdependent relationship
with nature, forged over millennia, resulting in holistic philosophies and practices of reciprocity and
respect that allow nature to continuously give to humans temporally and spatially. They are crucial
for informing alternatives to humanity’s current destructive path. However, Indigenous practices of
knowledge production and practice can also operate via hierarchies such as caste and gender,
which inequities need to be challenged.
 d) The climate crisis is a public health crisis, not only because of extreme weather (for
example, flood, drought, heat stress and heat stroke) but also because of new and
unanticipated health problems due to the movement of pests and pathogens as weather
systems and ecosystems change. As we learned from Covid 19, those at the bottom
rungs of the social hierarchy are also the ones who are most under-served by
infrastructure and social protection measures and have the highest mortality in these
crises. Education must highlight this aspect of climate justice.
e) Earth is currently undergoing a mass extinction of species; more than a million species
are under threat of vanishing forever, some within decades. This is directly driven by
climate change and an extractive and exploitive socio-economic system. Therefore,
climate education must bring out the fact that the polycrisis is a matter of multispecies
justice.
f) The various dimensions of climate justice in the Indian context must be a focus. At
higher educational levels this should include distributional, procedural, recognitional and
epistemic aspects of justice. In addition, the long shadow of colonialism and its
influence on climate science and policy, including the space for international negotiation
space, must be foregrounded. Developed nations and the rich everywhere are
historically primarily responsible for the climate crisis, and yet this responsibility is
repeatedly denied in multiple ways that do material harm to the most vulnerable nations
and peoples. The work of scholars from Global South nations in exposing and
overcoming the legacy of colonialism in this context must be foregrounded. At the same
time, colonialism should not be used as an excuse for anti-scientific, unfounded,
obstructionist and reactionary positions on climate change within Global South nations.

3. It must be experiential, action-based, service-based and connect the local to the

regional and global

a) It must enable students to learn from their local communities (schools, colleges,
neighbourhoods, townships, villages) in order to understand what meaningful climate
action could be through projects that enable collaborative, equitable, mutual learning
(including practice with community-based decision-making) and employ their talents
toward the work of imagining and building a different, better world. They can then be
encouraged to link these insights from the local with larger bioregional and planet-wide
processes (see also here and here). This has implications for curricula, assessment
standards and modalities.
b) It must enable students to understand and respond appropriately to climate,
weather and health emergencies - heat waves, storms and other manifestations of
extreme weather - that are likely to increase in frequency and/or intensity in the near
future, along with new public health emergencies. Further, climate education must
emphasize the plight of those majority of Indians who are most vulnerable to such
events - the urban and rural poor, farmers, Adivasis, Dalits, the disabled, the
 marginalized, poorly paid segments of the informal workforce, young children and
women who work outdoors and do not have access to relief from these extremes.
c) It must enable students to understand the importance of local adaptation measures (to
climatic impacts that are unavoidable) across social classes and status groups to
recognize maladaptation as well as the limits of adaptation (regarding impacts that are
too severe for humans to adapt to). Further, while mitigation of the climate crisis
requires large scale changes, understanding the links between adaptation and mitigation
across local, regional and global scales is crucial. These are best explored by taking the
learning outside the classroom in the form of service projects.

4. It must be Nature-immersive

Such a climate education should, in tandem with classes in ecology, restore students to the rest
of Nature through Nature-immersive, experiential learning by discovering Nature in their
urban environments as well as (when possible) in natural habitats from forests to grasslands
and deserts, so that they feel themselves to be a part of Nature rather than separate from it (see
this effort for example, or this one). This relationship-building with other species is especially
important in early grades, but needs to be maintained and deepened in senior classes as
well. Students will not be motivated to defend what they have not learned to love. Apart
from fieldwork in urban environments, natural habitats, urban gardening 14, food growing,
building, caring for the land as well as tackling the problem of waste or of plastics are some
ways in which students in urban areas and non urban spaces can be encouraged to engage
directly with their immediate locales.

None of these can be accomplished with the standard sage-on-a-stage conventional approach to
learning. Therefore, educational best practices for the students’ contexts need to be developed
and practiced right from the early classes. This includes curriculum design where learning is
iterative and layered, such that similar topics are reviewed and covered in more depth in
successive classes. Students should be encouraged to question, to think critically and to
work in groups in active, inquiry-based classrooms that also welcome discussions on ethics and

14
Gardening in a city. This includes growing plants in pots and containers in semi-outdoor or indoor
space such as home terraces and balconies. It may take place on roofs or in community gardens, or
even on the sly, in vacant lots or public spaces, where it is then known as "guerrilla gardening!"
Despite its small scale and its precariousness, urban gardening offers many ecological, economical,
and psychological benefits. It can be a wonderful way to encourage students to become engaged
with the natural world.
 emotions around climate change. Research indicates that climate change learning can often
increase anxiety and stress; therefore paying attention to the affective and psychological
as well as the cognitive aspect of learning is crucial. Inspiration from the relatively neglected
Indian liberatory and inclusive educational traditions, such as Gandhi’s Nai Taleem, Tagore’s
Shantiniketan experiment and the philosophical paradigm of the J Krishnamurti schools 15 should
inform research and practice in climate education in India.

Some First Steps toward change

We recommend:

1. Teacher training in inter-/transdisciplinarity based on the above points. Our current

education system is fragmented into strict subject boundaries which prevents learning
across disciplines. Additionally, there is a clear hierarchy between the disciplines, with the
natural sciences favoured over the social sciences and humanities. Thus, climate change
is taught primarily as a science subject, excluding its socio-economic and political
dimensions. However, in order to include the essential points we have mentioned above,
teachers in the sciences need to appreciate the intricate relationship between climate
change and socioeconomic and political issues. In turn, teachers in the humanities and
social sciences need to understand the basics of climate science. This kind of
inter/transdisciplinary learning is a special challenge, due to the proliferation of disciplines
and subdisciplines with their own distinct definitions, concepts, and philosophies. Thus,
teacher-training programmes must be founded on high quality research in inter-
/transdisciplinarity and institutions must allow for more cross-disciplinary conversations,
learnings, collaborations and projects and mid-career/lifetime learning opportunities for
teachers.
2. Teacher training toward systems thinking so that the scientific understanding of the
climate and ecological crisis is well-grounded conceptually, and the structural or systemic
nature of the entangled social-environmental problems of the polycrisis become apparent.
3. Teacher training toward building a non-hierarchical classroom culture free of
discrimination and bias, so that all students, without exception, enjoy a psychologically
safe and intellectually engaging learning experience. This especially warrants overcoming
casteism, patriarchy, and religious discrimination and ageist seniority in the classroom,
and developing materials in local languages. Building trust between students and teachers
to create such a classroom culture would require a transition from ‘power over’ to ‘power
with’ which also implies a flattening of the conventional teacher-student power differential.

15
J. Krishnamurti's educational philosophy highlighted our growing disconnect from the natural
world. He emphasised the importance of a quiet, observant immersion in Nature as an integral part
of a child's process of growing up. All his schools are set in stretches of great natural beauty;
students at these schools spend extensive time with the natural world, birdwatching, gardening,
hiking, or collectively watching the sunset every evening.
 Thus, age-appropriate, inquiry-based approaches in which students have a chance to
grow their curiosity and collaborate in knowledge construction are crucial. Aligning
concepts with practical applications beyond profit is also essential. A recognition of the
importance of such culture changes is especially necessary for education administrators.
4. Address the lack of resources and training for teachers in rural and otherwise
marginalized regions, especially with respect to making connections between local
changes and climate change. This training might take inspiration from initiatives like the
Hoshangabad experiment (but going beyond just the science) in the use of local materials
to teach. We encourage teachers to identify such successful initiatives in their local areas,
and connect these to pedagogy. This implies that quality learning and teaching materials
should be made available in local languages as well as English.
5. We recommend structural and programmatic changes In addition to pedagogical
transformation. This should include exploration of different ways to study climate change
across the curriculum, for example, introducing it simultaneously in courses on history,
psychology, philosophy, physics, chemistry, biology and literature - perhaps alongside a
meaningful, mandatory course on social-environmental problems that knits the various
threads together; and to do this at both school and college level. Additionally, curricular
and co-curricular (‘extra-curricular’) learning should be linked in ways that deepen student
understanding. Such changes warrant changes in the method of assessment as well. Note
that an exclusively exam-focused system of education that compels teachers to ‘finish the
syllabus’ at all costs is detrimental to the kind of quality climate education we recommend.
6. Nature-immersive education through transformation and regeneration of
educational campuses and localities based on native flora and fauna, enabled by both
students and faculty, and also, where possible, through regular expeditions into
surrounding natural areas, in order to appreciate local ecosystems while connecting to the
global predicament.
7. A commitment to quality research on climate education in India and the Global
South based on our recommendations 1-6 in formal and informal spaces through
grants, funding, peer-reviewed publications and institutional recognition of faculty. This
requires academic freedom 16, as new ideas can only be gestated in situations where “the
mind is without fear.” It calls for collaborations between other regions of the Global South
across the world.

The Stakes are very high

What the climate crisis demands of us is not simple or easy. We do not underestimate the
immense barriers to change, including practical problems faced by underfunded (small-town and
rural) schools where pupils live in poverty and may even be unfamiliar with the language in which
they are taught - or the ease of changing curricula governed by Education Departments and
Ministries in federated systems. Nor do we deny the difficulties with developing transdisciplinary

16
The freedom of teachers and students to engage in intellectual debate and inquiry without fear of
censorship, retaliation and suppression. It includes the right to dissent and critique establishment
positions and power structures.
 thinking and learning when knowledge has been for so long divided into rigidly compartmentalized
subjects that do not connect with each other. Different disciplines have terms, paradigms,
theories and concepts of what constitutes valid methodology that are based on contradictory
assumptions, some at variance with student experiences of the world. Similarly, going from rote-
learning within the four walls of the classroom to nature-immersive education that encourages
independent and critical thinking and the consideration of ethical questions might seem quite
impossible. However, the seriousness of the crisis warrants nothing less than a paradigm shift 17.

It is easy to think that the way we live now will persist indefinitely into the future, But we live and
thrive only because we are part of an intricate network of interrelationships, cycles, processes and
rhythms of Nature. These relationships are being torn apart at an unprecedented rate. Mass
migrations, increased conflict, pandemics, billion-dollar-scale damages from extreme weather,
and food and water shortages are already here and likely to amplify rapidly. In every sense of the
term, we are not ready, and worse still, the destruction continues practically unabated. To destroy
what sustains us is the height of madness and irresponsibility. Without meaningful climate
education, we will be betraying ourselves, our children, and future generations.

17
A fundamental change in the structure and basic assumptions underlying a way of thinking, being
and acting, leading to a profoundly different way of thinking, being and acting. Different from
incremental or superficial change in which the underlying assumptions remain the same. An
example from the history of Western science is the transition from the Ancient Greek Earth-centred
view of the cosmos to the sun-centred view of Copernicus and Kepler.