The kids are home from school, and they’re educating their parents: buy less stuff, be better at recycling, get on the bike and, increasingly, don’t buy from the corporations that are polluting the planet.
Young people are leading the global fight to stave off climate and environmental disaster. But, unless schools are sustainable – in more than a token manner – any attempts at educating them about the environment, quite rightly, result in charges of hypocrisy, tokenism and grandstanding. So, schools don’t really have a choice: they have to minimise not just their own environmental impact but also the environmental impact of their future graduates.
In late March, the Minister for Education Norma Foley announced that a new Leaving Cert subject, climate action and sustainable development, will be ready for fifth years in 2024, with the first exams to be held in 2026.
The Department of Education says the curriculum will be developed by the National Council for Curriculum and Development (NCCA), which has recently completed an international audit of education for sustainable development in the curriculum; this, it is hoped, will act as a foundation from which to develop a brief for the subject.
There will be no shortage of education programmes and stakeholders that can inform this new curriculum.
Perhaps the most familiar of these is Green Schools, a whole school action-based programme that aims to create a sustainable ethos and which, to date, has resulted in 3,400 schools – that’s a large majority of schools in Ireland – being awarded a green flag.
"We are about empowering students, teachers and the whole community to tackle environmental challenges in a constructive way," says Cathy Baxter, manager of Green Schools. "This is done through 10 themes, including waste, energy, water, biodiversity, sustainable travel and global citizenship. At an individual level, students learn life skills, they're involved in decision making, problem solving and action planning, and they develop a collective sense of a shared goal and purpose."
Ripple effect
Schools are a community hub so these actions have a ripple effect in the local community, Baxter says.
“Students share good environmental and sustainability practices with their families, local businesses get involved, and teachers and colleagues are impacted by what they learn. We’ve seen the creation of woodland corridors near schools, and sustainable travel being more heavily promoted.”
There are no costs involved for schools, with funding for Green Schools coming from a range of Government departments and agencies.
“We have mapped the curriculum to make it easier for teachers to find the links,” says Baxter. “As for the new subject, we have so much experience talking about climate and sustainable development, so we really welcome this development. It is important that it includes the latest, up to date climate science, that the focus on biodiversity is not lost, that it helps build resilience and life skills and that there are [opportunities] for practical action.”
Fergal Ahern is head of business development at SSE Airtricity, which has partnered with Microsoft to manage internet-connected solar panels in 29 primary and post-primary schools across Ireland.
“We have installed screens which show the solar generation coming from the panels on any given day, whether cloudy or bright and sunny,” he says. “It also shows what carbon emissions are being saved, and it runs hand in hand with an education programme focused on renewable energies, biodiversity and sustainability, and careers in science, technology, engineering and maths.”
Ahern says the students they work with care deeply about the environmental crisis and the world we are leaving for them, and it's a view echoed by Fergal McCarthy, principal of Kinsale Community School in Cork, which is taking part in the initiative.
“We’re focused on a sustainability agenda and reducing our carbon footprint. Our students care about global warming and climate change. We’ve introduced water harvesting technology, with the water harvested from the roof used for filling the cisterns in the toilets. We have recruited a sustainability chaplain whose core function is to ensure climate change, biodiversity and sustainability remain high on the school’s agenda. We’ve reduced paper use and we run a number of education programmes, including solar panels.”
‘Eco-anxiety’
McCarthy says that some students suffer from “eco-anxiety” or “eco-depression”, brought on by worrying about the environmental damage and destruction we are wreaking on the planet, and one of the roles of the sustainability chaplain is to provide support here.
Baxter says these anxieties are a massive issue for students.
“We listen and we acknowledge that this is a valid way to feel and we have developed a number of wellness workshops giving them space to talk about how they feel. But the best way to mitigate against this anxiety [is not talk] but instead to give them the tools to do take positive action. Getting out and making a difference gives hope and makes them feel part of the solution.”
“Schools should be a microcosm of society and so they need to educate, help people change habits, enlighten and offer hope,” says McCarthy.
“A lot of the messages in respect of sustainability can be rooted in hopelessness and despair, but at our school we are focused on the changes we can make and how we can address this issue and offer hope.
“Young people are sensitised to this issue and are looking to the adults in the room to offer solutions. They are disappointed in how crisis after crisis – Brexit, Covid and now the war in Ukraine – push these issues down the agenda. Notwithstanding the other important issues and crises, children need to see schools prioritise this.”
Businesses tackling climate change
EY Tackling climate change and the biodiversity crisis cannot mean business as usual. Large consulting corporations such as EY (formerly Ernst and Young) are involved in advising governments on climate change and biodiversity.
They also run EY Ripples, which aims to mobilise more than a million people across EY member firms and their communities to, among other goals, encourage business models that protect and regenerate the environment while also unlocking economic opportunity.
But is sustainability compatible with the model of infinite growth?
Stephen Prendiville, head of sustainability at EY, says they have carried out education sessions with transition year students focused on the circular economy.
“Schools, and indeed all educational facilities, have an opportunity to model behaviours that will be suitable for the future society we need. This involves a move towards a ‘sharing economy’, moving away from a sense of personal ownership of individual items and instead sharing more. Squaring the concept of sustainability with growth does not mean no growth at all – it means reducing waste and being smarter with our resources. That growth may not be as blistering as it has been for the last 100 years, but there is a model for sustainable growth there.”
Pinergy Energy company Pinergy has developed a new measurement tool to help organisations, including schools, to monitor and measure their carbon emissions and positive contributions.
This will involve installing a series of meters and sensors in the customer’s building, enabling the business to measure electricity and gas usage – regardless of the energy supplier – as well as water usage and waste usage (with select waste companies).
The meters will also measure the air quality in the school buildings – a timely intervention given the increased focus on ventilation in indoor spaces to prevent the transmission of Covid-19 and other viruses.