Koen Timmers: “Through creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking and collaboration, students can bring about direct climate action”

Koen Timmers: “Through creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking and collaboration, students can bring about direct climate action”

Koen Timmers is a Belgian educator, researcher and speaker who is trying to tackle climate change through climate action – in the classroom.

(Boumediene Belbachir)

For the fourth year an estimated 10 million teachers and students across more than 100 countries are coming together this October and November with one mission – to help young people solve the climate challenge through education.

Through the Climate Action Project – a free, six-week virtual learning programme that aims to encourage behaviour change through education while bringing Sustainable Development Goal 13 on climate action to life in the classroom – learners between the ages of six and 22 years will interact online with educators who help them to explore, brainstorm, discuss, solve problems and share solutions on climate change.

Teachers sign up for the programme and are guided through the curriculum (which is available in 15 languages) by a team of facilitators, comprising volunteer teachers from around the world. Each week, students will explore a different problem before posting brief videos on the website to share their findings.

The stated aim of the project is to allows students to be creative and to collaborate at a global level, all while fostering empathy, critical thinking and urgent climate action. So far, students have helped to plant more than 1.2 million trees through the PlantED project, amongst many other initiatives, and this year, the programme culminates in a five-hour webinar dubbed Climate Action Day on 5 November that will bring together world leaders, experts such as Dr Jane Goodall and Sir David Attenborough, and students. Koen Timmers – a Belgian computer science teacher, researcher, public speaker and 2018 Global Teacher Prize finalist, who leads the Climate Action Project alongside American educator Dr Jennifer Williams – tells Equal Times more.

How can students and teachers get involved in the Climate Action Project?

Teachers can register for free via the Climate Action Project website and they will receive guidelines which will navigate them through the six-week experience. Teachers will be personally guided by facilitators in 15 languages which allows them to ask questions, share concerns and best practices. The students are offered great opportunities. They can be part of #PlantED, our global tree planting initiative and they can even send a message to space thanks to our collaboration with NASA. We aim to give students an opportunity they will never forget and which cannot be topped by textbooks.

How do you roll out a global programme to students and educators when the realities on the ground are so different? A young person in Bangladesh is not facing the same immediate impacts from climate change as a young person in Germany.

Exactly. This is an important part of the project. We shift from local to global throughout the programme. In this student-centred journey, students have to find out about the local causes and effects of climate change and they have to disseminate [this knowledge] to their peers in other continents by creating short videos and having live online interactions. The teachers get a new role: rather than instructing, they will guide the students. And to make sure that they have the right background and context, there is a curriculum [co-authored by WWF International] with all of the required information. After a few weeks, students will have learned in authentic ways that some of their peers had hurricanes, others had floods and some had wildfires during the past few years as a direct result of climate change. The project also offers intercultural exchanges which are crucial in a constantly changing and polarized world.

What impact do you think the action of people like Greta Thunberg and groups like Extinction Rebellion have had on the way young people view climate change?

They gave an important signal to governments, organisations, students and people in general. People have started to realise that something has to change. But I feel that we can do more than go on strike. Every student has the potential to do more than memorise definitions about the climate. By making sure they come up with solutions we address some very important skills like creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking and collaboration which will become increasingly important. And by sharing those skills on a global scale we all get to learn from each other’s findings. During the past years we’ve had students coming up with recipes for bioplastics, solar- and salt-powered cars, they have started using bikes, 60 million trees have been planted, students have even [gone to canvass] their prime ministers. Some of these actions have brought about direct change, others have changed perceptions, all have been meaningful. But in the end, we have the same goal as Greta: changing students’ behaviour and society’s mindset when it comes to climate change.

Can programmes like the Climate Action Project impact policy at a national and international level?

We already had a breakthrough in Ireland where students brought about national change with their Green Dot Movement [students in Ireland embarked on a successful campaign to change the labelling on packaging to make it easier for people to recycle waste correctly]. They worked with the Minister of Environment and were supported by their President. In Portugal, the Ministry of Education sent a letter to every school and they will be making the [Climate Action Project] curriculum part of the national curriculum. This year we have worked with the United Nations Environment Programme and ministries of education in 15 countries. We will strive for compulsory climate education at a national level and will create a manifesto asking mayors to make a pledge to climate action. Imagine 3,000 cities pledging globally to do more and do better! This will happen in the coming weeks.

Countries around the world will be declaring their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to national Paris Agreement targets at the end of this year. Is there any mechanism to ensure that young people’s voices will be heard?

It is hard to be taken seriously [when it comes to national climate policies] as a student or even teacher. But we have found out that creating partnerships, having public figures and experts endorse the project, and attracting media attention helps to get things done. It has taken us three years.

One of the aims of this project is to ensure the institutionalisation of climate change and environmental action as part of national education curricula across the globe. How can countries achieve that?

At this moment only one country has compulsory climate education: Italy. First of all, it requires the willingness of governments to see the need for it. Secondly, we need to point out how [to implement it]. Having a curriculum which can be used nationally is important. That is why we came up with a document [the Climate Action Project curriculum] which doesn’t require one to be part of the six-week project [to access it] and which has accurate, verified facts, endorsed by the WWF and many scientists.

The students you work with have come up with some great ideas. For example, students in Indonesia have created eco-bricks made from plastic waste while their peers in Tanzania have created a heater using plastic bottles. Are there any plans to help countries to adopt these innovations on larger scale?

Having students coming up with interesting new concepts, prototypes and even inventions is the easiest part: it requires a good teacher and students willing to go the extra mile. Having them disseminated is part of the project. But making sure that they become a reality in countries which really need solar ovens, biogas plants and eco-bricks, that is a challenge which requires different ingredients. One is the guidance and training of entrepreneurship. This year we will be offering assistance in this area through a group of experts, interns and organisations. The second is funding. As the project is non-funded, this is still a weak spot.

Where do you see the Climate Action Project in the next five years?

In five years, we hope to have inspired as many students and teachers on earth as possible. Not only to have created impact within classroom walls but also to have brought substantial change at a national level.