What does it mean to be in the climate space? What does it mean to make an impact? The more time that I have spent immersing myself in the sector, the more I have come to appreciate just how vast and diverse people’s contributions to the sector can be.
When I was completing my undergraduate program at the University of Notre Dame, I decided that I wanted to focus on the intersection between the lived human experience and climate change. I began to learn about how people experienced and suffered from climate impacts in the present day from a few of my classes at Notre Dame. Having lived previously in an area where climate change was treated very lightly and with a lens that rarely reached outside of the realm of sterile-feeling numbers and far-off sustainability targets, these revelations sparked a deep interest in me. I wanted to find out more. I was driven to discover the other areas of the climate crisis that I had little clue about at the time, to bring light to the stories that people faced right here, right now. How human systems are entangled with ecological processes, how people’s lives are changing due to the increasing severity of climate impacts, how communities respond to these new environmental realities—these are the questions that motivated me and continue to motivate me. I saw climate action most vividly through the lens of grassroots action and direct advocacy, and my research and the resources available to me at the time further reinforced this perception.
The longer I have spent working on climate issues and meeting people with similar interests, the more I have come to appreciate the manifestations of climate action outside of solely direct, grassroots action. I vividly remember, for example, learning from a member of the Australian youth delegation at COP28 how art can be a powerful form of advocacy and action, inspiring and educating people to more deeply consider their place in the natural world and the fight to keep it healthy. Despite not necessarily being on the metaphorical front lines, I found it fascinating how conveying climate realities and the urgency of our collective fight against the crisis could be made much more moving by using art as a medium. I’ve come to understand more deeply in time that people from so many different disciplines, backgrounds, and areas contribute their piece to the puzzle to make the full picture.
I felt this shift deeply when I joined the Centre for Environment Education. No longer was I focusing on grassroots actions and highlighting stories of lived climate realities—instead, I was putting my efforts towards creating educational modules and training materials for students and teachers. The parts of the fight against the climate crisis that I had become passionate about were now only a piece of the puzzle. My primary task now was to write a module about climate change and sustainability more broadly, as an introduction to both the crises facing our planet and what students could do to protect the environment. At first, while I was excited to take a new approach, I wondered if I was too far removed from tangible action. Could creating educational materials really make a significant impact on the problems facing the world here and now?
In the course of my work, however, I came to realize the real impact that my work, and the work of my office at CEE, could have. The severity of climate change has only become known relatively recently to communities around the world—even if people are exposed to what the phenomenon is, it is less common for people to be aware of how extensive its impacts are in the present day. As such, environmental education has a significant and essential role in the fight against climate change. People need to be aware of the crises facing our planet to take action against it; in an era marred by tidal waves of climate misinformation, effective education on what is really happening with our planet’s ecology becomes even more critical. Young people are the voices and the change-makers of the future. Providing effective environmental education to support their growth gives them the foundation to make the grassroots change I had studied before possible.
At CEE, I had the opportunity to be a part of that incredible work. I led the creation of a module for teacher training that provided guidance on how to transact concepts surrounding individual sustainability actions—the “handprint actions” that each of us can do to make the world greener. I worked with the team to design a module on climate change and sustainability that is planned to be used by almost 3,000 schools across India. I facilitated an all-day workshop for students from 8 different countries on the intersection of climate change and citizenship, in which I presented climate realities and our role in protecting the environment, held discussions, and encouraged collaboration and perspective-sharing within the diverse group. All of these experiences have given me firsthand experience into how impactful educational work can be against the climate crisis. I have gained a deep appreciation for the wonderfully vast and varied approaches that people take to protect the world around them and firmly believe that each of these perspectives brings something new, unique, and needed to the fight against climate change. The fact that there are so many approaches both gives me great hope for our collective ability to make large-scale positive change, as well as great excitement for all of the new perspectives and ideas our future leaders will bring to take us to a greener future.
