United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Issues Position Paper Addressing the Climate, Environment, and
Biodiversity Crises in and Through Girls' Education. The Position
Paper calls for continued support to 'strengthen Education Cannot
Wait's role in ensuring continuity of education for all in the face
of increasing extreme weather events and emergencies.'
LONDON, Dec. 8, 2022
/PRNewswire/ -- The United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and
Development Office (FCDO) issued a ground-breaking Position Paper
today that draws clear linkages between the climate crisis and
global education crisis.
The Position Paper calls for continued support to "strengthen
Education Cannot Wait's role in ensuring continuity of education
for all in the face of increasing extreme weather events and
emergencies."
Worldwide, the climate crisis is impacting the education of 40
million children every year. Globally, 222 million vulnerable girls
and boys are impacted by conflict, climate-induced disasters,
forced displacement and protracted crises and are in need of urgent
education support according to Education Cannot Wait, the UN global
fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.
Climate-induced disasters affect children's ability to go to or
stay in school. And, even when children stay in school, climate and
environmental changes – such as rising temperatures, droughts and
floods – affect their ability to learn. These negative impacts on
learning exacerbate cycles of poverty and inequality and drives
conflict for increasingly scarce natural resources.
"Education is an assumed, but hugely undervalued, component of
responses to climate change impacts, and efforts to mitigate and
adapt to them. It is essential for reducing vulnerability,
improving communities' resilience and adaptive capacity,
identifying innovations, and for empowering individuals to be part
of the solution to climate and environmental change," according to
the Position Paper.
Climate change and girls' education are two of the UK's primary
international development objectives, aligning closely with ECW's
focus on climate change, displacement and girls' education.
Nevertheless, "too often climate and environmental change is
viewed in isolation from education," according to the paper. "If we
want to effectively tackle these priority issues, we must better
understand how they are linked and find integrated solutions."
"Education must be put front and center of the climate agenda.
By investing in girls' education in places like Pakistan, the Horn
of Africa and other countries on the frontlines of the
climate crisis, we are investing in an end to hunger, and vicious
cycles of displacement and violence. Education is also the single
most powerful investment we can make to ensure a climate-resilient
future for generations to come. As one of Education Cannot Wait's
founders and top-contributors, I am deeply grateful to the
United Kingdom for the continued
and bold support," said Yasmine
Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait.
The FCDO Position Paper calls for a paradigm shift in how
education is viewed in relation to the climate crisis. Where
education fosters positive cycles of improved resilience and
ability to adapt to and mitigate the severe impacts of climate
change.
The value of investing in girls' education is a key component of
this paradigm shift. "Girls' education is a human right and a game
changer for driving poverty reduction, and building prosperous,
resilient economies and peaceful, stable societies. It has huge,
undervalued, potential to contribute to tackling climate and
environmental change. Girls' secondary education has been
identified as the most important socioeconomic determinant in
reducing vulnerability to climate change."
The United Kingdom is the
second largest donor to Education Cannot Wait, with US$159 million in funding to date. Supported
through leading civil society organizations, the Send My Friend To
School Campaign is calling on the UK Government to pledge £170
million in additional funding to Education Cannot Wait.
The Education Cannot Wait High-Level Financing Conference on
16-17 February 2023 in Geneva offers a key moment for donors, the
private sector and high-net-worth individuals to make substantial
pledges to Education Cannot Wait, and deliver on the promises
outlined in both the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development
Goals.
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SOURCE Education Cannot Wait