Declared as the National Space Day, 23rd August 2023 marked a historic day of achievement for India. With the landing of Chandrayaan-3, scientists and technologists have once again come under the limelight. People across the country have witnessed how advances in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) can propel our nation towards development.
Our recent focus on STEM education comes from the understanding that it will equip our children with 21st century skills such as curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, spirit of innovation, and adeptness in emerging technologies. The ability to
question, explore, design, build, test and modify solutions to complex problems can contribute to resilience and self-dependence. As the demand for STEM jobs is expected to increase, integration of STEM education in schools is preparing qualified candidates to fulfil the market needs.
Lifestyles and LiFE
Climate change is affecting every living organism on Earth. Governments around the world have made commitments to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5 OC above pre-industrial times. Crossing this threshold will increase risks for humans, wildlife and ecosystems, including extreme weather events, melting of polar and glacier ice, flooding in coastal areas, droughts, forest fires, and spread of vector borne diseases in humans and plants. Link between increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially that of carbon dioxide, and climate change is evident.
‘Consumption’ is a driving force causing climate change. Our lifestyle choices revolving around consumerism, can increase our ‘carbon footprint’ which is the total amount of greenhouse gases that are generated by our actions. Single use products, fast fashion, over packaging – all require energy for production and transportation. The consequence is increased use of fossil fuels and GHG emissions, and a bigger carbon footprint. Many more such products and practices have become deeply ingrained in our daily lives, that it seems impossible to imagine that just a few decades these were almost absent. Say, disposable bottles of water. Sustainable practices have been deeply rooted in Indian traditions, focusing on judicious use of resources. Adoption of such practices in our lifestyle is a ‘pro-planet’ choice that we can consciously make. Production and consumption patterns can be proceeded in a more climate friendly direction with adoption of circular economy approaches where there is reduction of material use, redesigning of materials, products, and services to be less resource intensive; and recapturing waste as a resource to manufacture new materials and products.
Since the human race is facing a major threshold in terms of environmental vulnerability, a new phenomenon has come to ‘LiFE’, i.e. Lifestyle for Environment. These terms have become a global movement to encourage people to adopt an environmentally-friendly lifestyle, also known as ‘green living’. This movement indicates using the Earth’s limited resources in the most efficient way possible as well as switching to renewables and recyclables. Moreover, reducing carbon footprint, biodiversity preservation, and reduction of waste are some of the key principles to assure ecological sustainability. The LiFE seeks us to incorporate these principles into our routine lives to achieve sustainability goals.
Sustainability is cross-cutting transdisciplinary concept, which involves interplay of disciplines such as biology, ecology, climate, physics, geography, engineering, economics and others. Sustainability will be one of the defining challenges of the 21st century, so sound understanding of sustainable development and related concepts is necessary. Our educational system does not equip us to understand this well enough. Sustainability literacy, therefore, is important to fully understand the current global scenario, especially in the context of climate change.
STEM for Climate Action
It has become imperative to prepare our younger generation with mitigation and adaptation strategies to survive the effects of the global challenge of climate change. This starts with developing a deep scientific understanding of various aspects of climate change, which is evidence-based and is impacting all aspects of their lives.
The solution lies in understanding the problem at hand correctly and scientifically. STEM being at the core of environment composition, helps to learn the deep-rooted causes for the issues such as rising temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions, abnormal weather patterns, rising sea levels, air quality, extreme natural events, among others. STEM allows us to think outside of the norm, which leads to recognising ideas, alternatives and new possibilities. This type of thinking is fundamental in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The interdisciplinary approach to studying STEM along with its real-world application creates endless opportunities for the school education system to impart Climate Change education effectively. The key phrase ‘Catch them Young’ applied at school education level, will ensure early climate sensitization and formation of sustainable lifestyle habits among children, which will stay with them life-long. A child-to-parent approach will help in spreading the message exponentially, as there will be more chances of acceptance among adults when coming from their own children.
STEM education aims to develop and present innovative solutions to global issues. The skills offered by STEM education will not only enable children to understand and prepare to address this challenge but also prosper. This would entail bringing solutions for climate change and other issues and developing a lifestyle and practices that would sustain the impact of our actions. The hands-on experiential approaches to learning STEM subjects help children to acquire skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, creative thinking, innovation, and decision making which are considered key for developing innovative and practical solutions for climate change crisis.
Through the inclusion of the environment and climate change as an area of study, the students can be taught environmental science, engineering, and technology. By gaining knowledge about these aspects and then incorporating hands-on techniques, the students can design and develop sustainable models for energy conservation, participate and engage in ecological research and fieldwork, etc. thus addressing the environmental crisis. These hands-on activities will deepen their understanding and cultivate a sense of responsibility and empowerment as they become our future, and contribute to creating a sustainable world.
Actions for Sustainability
Actions which aim to decrease our carbon footprint will direct us towards a sustainable future. Low carbon lifestyles that include practices of water and energy conservation, reducing waste, recycling, healthy and sustainable lifestyle, etc. need to be adopted in our daily routine, to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, these practices need individual actions for the collective good. As rightly said by Robert Swan, “The greatest threat to our planet is to believe that someone else will save it”. Action at all levels – from individual to collective is important to tackle climate change. Irrespective of our nationality or economic status, all of us will be affected. Each individual needs to take up the responsibility to adapt to this new routine to bring change in our present for a sustainable future.
Use the renewables: Every aspect of human life, starting from personal needs to the needs of an economy at large, depends on energy resources. At present, most of these needs are being sufficed by using non-renewable sources of energy, which are also responsible for pollution of absolutely every kind. The use of natural and renewable resources for our energy consumption is the primary step towards achieving sustainability goals. For example, using solar panels for electricity at homes and office spaces, solar water heaters, wind energy turbines, hydropower etc. have proven to be pollution free and unlimited in supply as well as cost-effective in the long run, saving the electricity bill drastically.
Walking past the air polluters: The number of vehicles on the roads, especially in urban areas is growing, and causing a major concern about air pollution, making the air unbreathable. The Air Quality Index (AQI) speaks for it. Therefore, a much-needed lifestyle change calls for using public transport or bicycles for routine travel. Even walking for short-distance travel makes up for a day’s cardio exercise. Restriction in the number of cars owned by a household and/or the addition of electric vehicles are important measures to reduce vehicle emissions and ease the over-crowded roads. This practice will create more spaces, free of air pollution.
Be water wise: The shortage of water, especially during hot seasons is nothing new for households. And this problem has managed to surpass both rural and urban boundaries. Most of households face the problem of water cuts during the hot seasons, the reason being the scarcity of usable water on Earth. Some techniques to manage water usage are taking care of the running tap water, using a water bucket instead of showers during baths, rainwater harvesting in water tanks, recycling water for toilet flushing and washing cars, etc. These could save a considerable water quantity every year.
Manage the waste: The improper disposal of waste causes health issues in humans and other life forms as well as contributes to land, air, and water pollution. This issue can be tackled by collecting and using recyclable resources like paper, metals, organic products, recyclable plastic etc. There are many common practices by which we can lower the consumption of material resources such as taking our own bag while shopping instead of buying one from the store, mending and reusing torn clothes, recycling and transforming food waste into very useful fertilizers, fixing the broken thing using artistic skill to make a new product, etc.
Eat local and seasonal: Think about where your food has come from? How many processes has it undergone and distance has it travelled to reach from the farm to the table? Locally produced food is fresh and does not need processing to increase its shelf life. Not only it is nutritious, it requires less energy to produce, transport and store. Eating local and seasonal food reduces demand for out of season produce meaning less transportation, less refrigeration and smaller carbon footprint. To top it all, it provides economic benefit to local food producers.
Lifestyle changes for sustainable living do not stop here. There are many more practices that for a low carbon lifestyle. However, there are many challenges surrounding this new-age change in lifestyle. These being our high-level dependency on non-renewable resources for our daily needs, deep-rooted habits and value systems which are hard to break, economic constraints, lack of adequate access to such environment-friendly resources, lack of sufficient knowledge and information, and more importantly, the question, from where to begin! At present, almost all our preferences and actions that are not pro to this lifestyle lead to climate change, pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, etc. The solution lies in starting from here and taking small steps towards making our planet liveable for a longer period.
Small Steps to Begin with
Speaking of small steps, it is evidently accurate to say that education, especially foundational learning plays a key role in forming eco-friendly habits and developing sensitivity towards the environment in children. Alongside many subjects and practices that we make our children learn as part of their learning routine at schools and home, awareness about the state of the environment and its importance must be brought to their knowledge. The greenhouse emissions are at the peak because of human activities, which makes it even more justifiable that we must give it back to the environment, the power and resources to sustain. Education does both. It creates future human resources and empowers them with the capabilities to take action against environmental issues and then sustain it.
STEM based environment education with respect to knowing how even the smallest of our actions, from our food preferences to our selection of clothes affect the life surrounding us positively or negatively, is crucial for children from a very young age. It is like a well-planted seed, which will grow on its own to its full potential and give fruits for a lifetime, given that they are fed with the right energy. It will help the next generation decide what kind of future they want. We as grown-up individuals have to play our role as enablers for the right knowledge and information about what needs to be done and feel responsible for our own actions towards the environment.
“The earth is a fine place and worth fighting for.”
– Ernest Hemingway
