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Judith Herbertson

Head of Girls' Education, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Part of Climate change Development Education Women and Girls

24th January 2025

International Day of Education: creating hope in the climate crisis

The UK-funded CO-CREATE programme in Tanzania. Photo: Aga Khan Foundation

This International Day of Education, it’s impossible to ignore the climate and environment crisis. 2024 has been confirmed as the hottest year on record, and the last ten years have been recorded as the hottest decade. Disasters are becoming more severe and happening almost 5 times as frequently as 50 years ago.

Unsurprisingly, the impact of this on children is enormous. Over the course of their lives, 99% of children are exposed to at least one major climate and environmental hazard, shock, or stressor. Nearly half of the children in the world live in extremely high-risk countries for climate shocks.

How is the climate crisis affecting education?

The impact on children’s education is devastating. Extreme weather closed schools for at least 400 million students globally from January 2022 to June 2024. Floods, storms, and heatwaves caused at least 81 countries to temporarily shut their schools. In November 2024, 26 million children were out of school in Pakistan due to hazardous air pollution – almost half of the school-aged children in the country.

Even when schools don’t close, children are suffering from extreme heat and pollution, increased risk of disease, and food and water shortages: all of which are being worsened by climate change. Under these conditions children’s development is stunted and their ability to learn plummets. Imagine trying to learn long division, or a new language, in a crowded, overheated classroom. The temperature is 38 degrees, you’ve walked for over an hour to get to school that morning, and since then or even before then, you’ve had no water or food. Are you likely to be able to concentrate?

The most marginalised children face the greatest impact. The financial impacts of disasters and extreme weather mean many families cannot afford to send their children to school. In low-income countries, 18 school days are lost every year on average due to the climate crisis, compared to 2.4 days in wealthier countries.

The climate crisis is not happening in a vacuum. It’s exacerbating existing inequalities and adding extra stress to systems already in learning crisis. Girls, already impacted by existing gender inequalities, are disproportionately affected, and face school drop-out, child labour, and early marriage as families use negative coping mechanisms to survive. Over 60 million children and adolescents who are refugees, internally displaced or otherwise affected by crisis have been impacted by climate shocks since 2020.

Why is education still important in this context?

Some, in the grips of climate anxiety, may question why we are bothering to focus on educating children. The current state of the world is bleak. The future looks bleaker.

But that is exactly why this moment is so significant. By redoubling our focus on education, we are putting in place the long-term changes necessary to create a new, better world, in which the future for the coming generations is not bleak, but hopeful.

Quality education is an undervalued component of our global response to climate and environmental change and efforts to mitigate and adapt to them. Educated children are less likely to die in climate related disasters, even when their relative wealth is considered. Every additional year of schooling for girls leads to significant improvements in a country’s overall resilience to climate-related disasters.

Girls with literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills help families better process and act on information about risks, be those extreme weather events or the loss of infrastructure, livestock, or crops. Parents are much more receptive to climate-messaging when it’s done with or through their children.

Education is essential for reducing vulnerability, improving individual and community resilience, identifying innovations, and empowering individuals to be part of the solution. Children who are educated lead better, more resilient lives, and they create better futures for all of us. Most of all for themselves and those that come after them.

That’s one of the reasons why the current learning crisis is causing us to lose sleep. We know that 70% of children cannot read a simple sentence by the age of ten. In sub-Saharan Africa (the continent likely to be most affected by climate change) that jumps to 90%. That leaves us with a major deficit in resilience, adaptation and mitigation – one which the world cannot afford.

What is the UK doing for climate education?

That’s why both Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Minister for Development Anneliese Dodds are making climate and education a priority. On her recent visit to Malawi, Minister Dodds saw the devastating impacts of the recent drought and emphasised the UK’s commitment to unlocking climate finance in the poorest countries globally.

Minister Dodds also announced support for millions of primary school children to increase access to learning in Malawi. On her visit to Zambia, she saw how the UK is helping to educate farmers to adapt to the climate crisis. Minister Dodds is resolutely committed to this work through education and so are we.

Minister Dodds visiting a Standard 1 Class in Malawi in December 2024.

The UK is a leader on tackling climate change and education. We were the first country to convene ministers of education and environment at COP26 in 2021, and we’re continuing to build on that legacy. Our 2022 position paper set out the UK’s plans to address climate, environment, and biodiversity crises in and through girls’ education by building more resilient and inclusive education systems.

The UK is also a founding partner of the the Declaration on the Common Agenda for Education and Climate Change. We developed this with UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership and the Global Partnership for Education and launched at COP28 in Dubai. The Declaration is a high-level political commitment with targeted actions to adapt, mitigate, and invest in addressing the impact of climate change on education systems, and ensuring education plays a bigger role in the response to climate change. Ninety countries, including all members of the Commonwealth, have now endorsed the Declaration, and we are continuing to lobby to get as many countries on board as possible.

We’re also calling on international governments to follow up on their endorsement with robust action. We’re providing guidance for countries to include education in their Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans to unlock further climate finance for education. In the coming year, the UK is partnering with Brazil ahead of COP30 to encourage global efforts in fulfilling the Declaration’s goals.

The UK funds multiple programmes and pilots to address the crisis. This includes the Climate Action Partnership for Education (CAPE), which tests creative solutions for how girls’ education can address climate and environmental change. CAPE’s first project, CO-CREATE, is testing new, teacher and youth-led solutions for promoting climate action in schools and communities in Tanzania.

We are also working with the International Rescue Committee on an innovative approach through the Climate Resilient Education Systems Trial (CREST), which is the first parametric insurance pilot aiming to ensure that education continues to be provided during a crisis.

Parametric insurance is a non-traditional insurance product that offers pre-specified payouts based upon a trigger event. It’s particularly well-suited for natural catastrophes but can also be applied to other emerging risks where data are available, as it ensures donor-supported premiums are predictable and avoids spikes in spend during a crisis. This ensures that government, civil society and international community responses can be pre-planned, financed, and rapidly deployed.

We’re not stopping there. We’re already funding several bilateral programmes focused on education and climate, including in South Sudan, Tanzania, Pakistan, Malawi, and Ghana. We’re also collaborating with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies. GPE’s focus on longer-term education system strengthening and resilience means the fund is actively supporting partner countries to address climate change in and through education.

ECW is central to our rapid response in the face of crises and emergencies. For example, in 2024 with anticipatory action pilots in Pakistan and Somalia to support communities to proactively reduce the impact of future climate hazards.

What about the future?

The UK-funded CO-CREATE programme in Tanzania. Credit: Aga Khan Foundation

Whether or not we solve the global learning crisis will determine whether countries have populations with the knowledge, skills, and agency to have an impact as leaders of tomorrow. Or whether women, girls, other marginalised groups, and countries themselves remain disempowered in the face of worsening impacts. Collective global action is essential – no country or region is exempt.

Today’s children can be tomorrow’s innovators, pioneers, and campaigners. Quality education opens leadership opportunities for girls as adults. Emerging evidence suggests that their participation in national politics has the potential to lead countries to adopt policies to lower national CO2 emissions and adapt effectively.

This International Day of Education, we commend everyone taking on the climate crisis. We are fighting for children’s education and for a world in which all children can thrive. At the International Development Committee, Minister Dodds urged us to remember that “the impact of the climate crisis now on people’s lives has to be at the heart of what the department does on development”.

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About Judith Herbertson

Judith Herbertson is the Head of Girls' Education Department. Judith has held previous roles in embassies and high commissions overseas, in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Pak...

Judith Herbertson is the Head of Girls' Education Department. Judith has held previous roles in embassies and high commissions overseas, in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Pakistan, as well as in the UK. She has worked in the Department for International Development, and now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), since 2003.