UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

09/13/2024 | News release | Archived content

COP 29: Climate education in West Africa and the Sahel: One of the world’s climate hotspots, on the frontline on climate and environmental education

Angus Mackay & Albert Compaore (UNITAR), David Knaute & Chloë Haffner (UNICEF), Yoshie Kaga (UNESCO)

This is "the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it", as the saying goes. About 50% of the people living today in the Sahel are under the age of 15. If you were to define 'young person' as 35 or under, as per the African Union's definition, then it would be the overwhelming majority.

At COP 28, in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a newly minted Regional Declaration on Strengthening Climate Change Education in West Africa was launched to make the case that education holds the key to building resilience across the region, precisely because it empowers young people to act and take advantage of the "demographic dividend" that is the African continent's greatest asset for the future.

The Regional Declaration is grounded on historical events across the subregion. If you cast your mind back to the late 1960s until the early 1980s, you will recall that a series of severe droughts hit the Sahel. Tragically, over 100,000 people died of food shortages and disease in events that turned out to be the harbinger for the climate crisis that we are all too familiar with today. In response, the Permanent Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) was established in 1973 with the specific mandate to promote food and nutritional security and to fight against the effects of drought and desertification.

One of the CILSS's long-standing priorities has been environmental education. The latter was progressively introduced by CILSS member States in the 1980s and 1990s, culminating with Ministerial Conferences on Environmental Education in 1996 (Dakar) and 2000 (Niamey).

The Regional Declaration is grounded on historical events across the subregion. If you cast your mind back to the late 1960s until the early 1980s, you will recall that a series of severe droughts hit the Sahel. Tragically, over 100,000 people died of food shortages and disease in events that turned out to be the harbinger for the climate crisis that we are all too familiar with today. In response, the Permanent Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) was established in 1973 with the specific mandate to promote food and nutritional security and to fight against the effects of drought and desertification.

One of the CILSS's long-standing priorities has been environmental education. The latter was progressively introduced by CILSS member States in the 1980s and 1990s, culminating with Ministerial Conferences on Environmental Education in 1996 (Dakar) and 2000 (Niamey).

UNICEF/UNI562960/Keïta

The Regional Declaration also draws inspiration and legitimacy from more recent developments; notably Article 12 of the Paris Agreement (2015) and the 10-year Glasgow Work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment (2022), linked to Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which identifies six priority areas: education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation on these issues.

Already signed by seven environment ministers from across the region (Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Niger, Senegal and Togo), in addition to the CILSS itself, the Regional Declaration is a call to action on climate and environmental education in order to build the capacities of the region's young population, thereby "cashing in" on the demographic dividend. Much is already being done across the thirteen members states of the CILSS, both through national budgetary action and international support, yet more leadership and support is needed to help to activate a trans-societal response to the climate challenges ahead.

The Regional Declaration is proof of a significant momentum in relation to protecting children's rights in the face of the climate crisis in the region. The Climate Commission for Sahel Region (CCRS) backed COP 28's Decision for more child-focused climate action. The Commission declared that "the consideration for children under 10 years of age is one of the COP's most important decisions", adding that "it will be necessary to support actions that enable them to ensure a decent living environment, sustainable food and nutritional security, a climate-sensitive educational system that will forge in them the values ​​of future leaders capable of assuming and ensuring that their future generation lives in harmony with the environment".

For its part, the United Nations continue to be active in environment and climate related education across West Africa and the Sahel, following a lifelong approach to education, from early childhood to adult learning, and from formal to informal education.

At COP 28, the UNESCO-led Greening Education Partnership, which engages more than 1,000 organisations worldwide in transformative education around four pillars (greening curriculum, schools, teachers' and systems' capacities, and communities), launched the Declaration on the common agenda for education and climate change, building on efforts initiated at COP 26 and COP 27. The United Nations Institute for Training and Education (UNITAR) hosts the Secretariat of the UNCC:Learn, which has been providing free climate and green economy training for public sector officials for more than a decade and helps countries to develop strategic and inclusive approaches to climate learning. UNICEF has been instrumental in placing child rights at the heart of climate action and has recently launched the Green School Initiative (GSI) in West and Central Africa. Many other organisations - UN agencies and others - are engaging, which augurs well for a more resilient and climate literate generation in West Africa and in the Sahel, coming of age just at the right moment.

UNICEF/UN0794581/Dejongh

In the lead up to COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the CILSS, supported by its member States and UN partners, will be engaging in shuttle diplomacy to gather more signatures for the Regional Declaration, and a commitment by international partners to support its implementation through national roadmaps and a regional project. The Government of Senegal, through the Ministry of Environment and Ecological Transition (METE), has already championed the cause, by launching a national roadmap at the occasion of a high-level workshop organized in Dakar on August 12th, 2024.

A final message may be one of unanimity and consensus from one of the world's climate hotspots, where knowledge and skills can be the difference between life and death. And of course, climate change is not only an agenda for children and youth; it is a key agenda for all in the region, and all of humanity. As the United Nations Secretary General, Mr. António Guterres, recently said in his special address on climate change on 2024 World Environment Day, an area for action "is ramping up protection from the climate chaos of today and tomorrow. It is a disgrace that the most vulnerable are being left stranded, struggling desperately to deal with a climate crisis they did nothing to create". Close to nowhere is it truer than in West Africa and in the Sahel.