The issue of climate change has been on the news for a long time. These days, it is would be fair to say that everyone has heard a thing or two about climate change and how it affects our day to day life. However, when it comes to real education, the integration of climate change into the curriculum of the Ethiopian education system has a long way to go.

It is always a wonder to see children coloring pictures of trees and singing in nursery schools listening to poets and stories from students in primary school and hearing about innovative ideas from high school students. Yet, when it comes to raising awareness of environmental conservation, students in Ethiopia have little to say. This is because the curriculum they have been taught gives little if not none emphasis on issues like environmental conservation and climate change.

The danger of not educating the young generation about environmental protection is severe in a way that it creates a generation that considers climate change to be a myth and nothing more than a conspiracy theory. This danger could even be catastrophic in a poor country like Ethiopia where the catastrophes that are caused due to climate change can do a whole lot of irreversible damage to the wellbeing of the general public. Almost all Ethiopian children grow up watching their parents cut trees for the purpose of cooking, deforest lands for the purpose of farming and pollute rivers for the purpose of dumping waste. Unless there is a concrete curriculum that has the framework to educate children and youth on climate change, it will be difficult to refute the existing backward indifference to climate change in Ethiopia.

There are a number of countries from which Ethiopia can learn how to incorporate climate change to its education system. Countries like the USA, Canada and a number of other European countries have managed to successfully incorporate the issue of climate change to their educational system at all levels. Ethiopia also needs to do the same to combat climate change effectively.  

The best curriculum to educate young students about climate change is the one that states the facts, but also gives clear directions to the solutions. Such curriculum will encourage students at all levels to seek innovative ways to combat climate change.  Children must understand the benefit of having a clean life and living in an environment with reduced greenhouse gases and there no better way to do so other than integrating issues related to climate change to the overall curriculum.

Considering the importance of this topic, Eco-generation in Ethiopia will host an event on JULY 25 2016 to promote the theme ?Climate change education for a better future? with selected children and youth.  The event will be participatory and interactive among the attendees.