Presentation short abstract

We review more than 150 climate education resources available online in English and Spanish for secondary and high school students and analyze them through the lens of critical environmental education, political ecology and environmental justice.

Presentation long abstract

In 1992, when the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro officially recognized the need for reorienting education systems to address sustainable development issues, Canadian critical environmental education scholar Bob Jickling published a contested article in the field titled “Why I don’t want my children to be educated for sustainable development”. He basically problematized the celebrated concept of sustainable development and argued that educating for a predetermined objective is against the spirit of education, which must provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary for the development of autonomous and critical thinking so they can realize, understand and engage wisely in debates between anthropocentric and ecocentric worldviews and their corresponding practical approaches. Nowadays, in times of climate emergency and increased social complexity, when education has been identified as one of the key action points for promoting climate change mitigation and adaptation, how climate education adopts such a critical pedagogical perspective and engages with justice and power issues remains a relevant question. We review more than 150 climate education resources available online in English and Spanish for secondary and high school students and analyze them through the lens of critical environmental education, political ecology and environmental justice. In general, the reviewed climate education resources, particularly those addressing specific climate change risks and developed by governmental agencies and private companies, do not adequately address the social injustices associated with such climatic events and fail to reflect on how power relationships and political-economic processes mediate mitigation and adaptation responses.