Educating for variability and climate change in Uruguay, a case study

Abstract

Among the possible actions to face climate change, education has a central role, great hopes have been deposited in its potential to contribute to the construction of a sustainable world. However, although there are global climate change education initiatives, they still do not generate a significant impact, especially at the local level. The deepening of the location of educational actions is key to reaching the public. It is necessary to permeate the national educational systems and non-formal education generated by local civil society. For this reason, it is important to learn about successful local initiatives that can enrich and strengthen future practices at all levels. In Uruguay, initiatives have been developed that can serve as case studies that contribute to collecting lessons learned and areas of opportunity. This paper includes three experiences developed by multidisciplinary teams from the Centre for Response to Variability and Climate Change of the University of the Republic in conjunction with key local government actors and local civil society. It is about the process of elaboration and implementation of an audio-visual educational resource for adolescents, a cycle of workshops for young people and a multimodal online course for professional adults and teachers. The experiences demonstrate the relevance of generating locally contextualized educational resources and actions to contribute to the achievement of global objectives of sustainable development. Likewise, they present some lessons learned in terms of theoretical approaches, methods and practices of education for climate change.