Atelina Kailea

In order for education to advance society, it must meet the needs of the people involved and be appropriate to the social and material environment in which it takes place. Also, education must be adaptive and cumulative, taking into account the members of society’s aspirations and concepts of development and responding to the exigencies of the situation.

In order for a society to advance and innovate, individuals must have access to a high-quality education that empowers them to explore the nuances of the environment around them and gain knowledge that will lead to mastery of their surroundings. In the past, our ancestors did not go to a modern school, they only learnt at home and can predict whether by studying the insects characteristics, fruit bearing etc. For instance, the grandparents and great grandparents once said, on days prior to rainy days, the honey bees spent more time out of the hive foraging for honey as compared to days where rain was not forecast the next day. If the breadfruit will bear many fruit compared to normal bearing, the grandparents said there will be a tropical cyclone on the cyclone seasons.

Therefore, if traditional knowledge will be implanted into the curriculum, the students will enjoy and can understand the lesson easier than reading through a whole passage of notes that was written overseas. The students grew up at home knowing and listening to the knowledge that has been told by their grandparents from generation to generation. They can explorer and can predict the seasons before it comes. The parents at home can also help out with their studies and can show them more signs of seasons and whether.

Climate change is posing a serious threat to Pacific Islands, as they are extremely vulnerable to its effects.  However, in the Pacific for hundreds of years the knowledge systems are rich in information regarding adapting to climate change.  That knowledge has grown during the last decade on the vulnerabilities of Pacific Island countries to the effects of climate change. For many centuries, people have survived on their islands. A Tongan concept of valuing children mentioned above” Reefs of today is an island of tomorrow” is essential to the culture and tradition of Tongan for a brighter and better Tonga. Pacific education ministries perceived that students in years 7 and 8 are an appropriate time to introduce to the science of Climate Change. (SCP,2013).

 In the context of climate change education, indigenous traditional knowledge plays an important role.  Children can be taught at young age however, the can be found boring in the classroom as it is new to their knowledge. The government can intervene here and create an interesting ways to approach this issue to make it more interesting hence cultural and traditional oriented. For instance, in the past years the Ministry of Tourism in Tonga have been hosted a competition for the Primary and Secondary Schools in terms of arts, poetry, traditional dancing and singing completion with a theme of ‘How to combat climate change’. The prices were very attractive as it was in thousands Tongan Pa’anga (dollar). This competition was very effective as the entire primary and secondary schools in Tonga participated. The objectives and learning outcomes of this competition was achieved as it was to broaden the awareness of climate change in Tonga especially young children.

Reference:

SPC (2013). Learning about climate change in the Pacific way A guide for Pacific teachers Tonga. Retrieved from https://www.spc.int/sites/default/files/wordpresscontent/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Tonga.compressed.pdf

There is a significant problem of a lack of highly skilled teachers within Pacific schools who have the necessary pedagogical skills to teach Climate Change within schools. This has been recognized as a barrier to the integration of Climate Change into the formal education process.  According to Monroe (2017) there are some teachers who believe that they lack the necessary skills and knowledge to teach effectively about climate change.   It is because climate change has several aspects that make it an especially challenging topic to teach.  To resolve this issue, there are several approaches that teachers can use, such as participating in workshops and trainings to develop the knowledge and skills that will enable them to deliver lessons in accordance with the Education for Sustainable Development framework.  Another solution would be to utilize indigenous knowledge for teaching how to adapt and mitigate climate change.  It is possible, for example, for teachers to teach students how to mitigate or adapt to climate change through the use of life-long traditional approaches to climate change, such as dances, stories, songs, traditional weather forecasts, and agricultural practices.

While growing up in Tonga, I recall our primary school teachers telling us stories about how our ancestors used traditional warning signs to recognize the onset of weather disasters such as cyclones and heavy rainfall.  For example, a cyclone is likely to occur the following year when a large number of fruits such as breadfruit grows in bunches and not just one or two together.  Another traditional warning signs for cyclones is the change in shape of the new growth on banana plants, which curls over rather than growing straight up.  As a result, our teachers taught us these signs through singing and drawing so that we would be well prepared all the time.

Reference;

Martha C. Monroe, Richard R. Plate, Annie Oxarart, Alison Bowers & Willandia A. Chaves (2019) Identifying effective climate change education strategies: a systematic review of the research, Environmental Education Research, 25:6, 791-812, DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2017.1360842

According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), education is an important factor in addressing climate change.  In order to adapt to climate change, young people can be taught about the effects of Climate Change.  Educating all people, but especially motivating the young to take action, empowers them.  For example, it helps youths to understand and address the consequences of global warming, encourages them to change their behaviors, and assists them in adapting to what is already an urgent situation. 

For me, the Pacific region is the best illustration of how important it is to educate children in today’s world to cultivate critical and creative thinking so that they can become engaged with sustainable lives.  This is because of the high vulnerability of these Islands to the impact of climate change.  There is an urgent need to find new, innovative ways to teach Pacific children and youth in a way that promotes resilience among them.  Referring to the school curriculum across the Pacific, Climate Change is only partially taught in different existing subjects such as Geography and Science, however,  a full  review of the curriculum is needed to address Climate Change as a new subject to be taught in both secondary and tertiary education levels.  Providing young people with the knowledge and tools to tackle tomorrow’s challenges has become a consensus view in many countries and is critical for effective and sustained climate-change adaptation in Pacific Island countries.  (Parker et al., 2018)

Change has always been a part of Pacific knowledge systems. Because the Pacific is so vast and residents are exposed to extreme conditions, they are constantly forced to adapt in order to improve their conditions. The issue of climate change (CC) is a more recent phenomenon that requires immediate action. Promoting climate action requires education. It provides people with the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes necessary to tackle the climate crisis and act as agents of change, helping them understand the climate crisis and its impacts. In Pacific SIDS, Climate change is most likely to affect those who have the most difficulty accessing information and education. Among these are children and adults, especially girls, women and people with disabilities, as well as members of poor families, indigenous groups, ethnic minorities, and communities living in countries with a high vulnerability to climate change. Partnership arrangements between NGOs have been used to engage vulnerable and marginalized groups in education based on traditional and cultural approaches. For example, Tonga, an island nation in the Pacific, considers Indigenous Knowledge, including dances, stories, songs, weather forecasting, agricultural practices, and governance systems, to be directly relevant to adapting to climate change. Integrating and utilizing Indigenous traditional knowledge approaches is inherently challenging, due to the fact that much of the knowledge is not recorded in documents but instead passed on through social interaction, such as telling stories. In an example from Fiji in the Pacific, Indigenous traditional knowledge was utilized for the identification of coastal native species that are suited to reduce erosion and reduce coastal flooding, as well as gaining historical knowledge from the area’s residents regarding past flood events and their impacts.

The IPCC Assessment noted that indigenous knowledge is “an invaluable basis for developing adaptation and natural resource management strategies in response to environmental and other forms of change. “Indigenous or traditional knowledge may prove useful for understanding the potential of certain adaptation strategies that are cost-effective, participatory and sustainable”. (Raygorodetsky, 2011)