On 4 th May 2022, the One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership (UN CC:Learn) officially launched its fifth implementation phase at an online event that brought together over 30 stakeholders, among UN and non-UN partners. The gathering provided a space for partners to reflect on the role climate change education and training play in addressing climate change and, against this background, discuss the programme’s future activities.
The session covered UN CC:Learn’s key achievements so far, stressed key principles and directions (e.g., promoting gender equality and leaving no one behind), and walked participants through the four new outcome areas of this new phase, around which the programme’s activities, projects and indicators will be shaped.
They are:
- Assist partner countries in promoting climate change learning and action
- Support training institutions by helping them integrate climate change education into their curricula
- Empower youth to ramp up youth participation and action on climate change
- Keep providing free and accessible e-learning resources to the public in multiple formats on topics related to climate change
The event also hosted a panel on “Reframing the Climate Change Narrative”, which consisted of an exchange of ideas on how the climate change discourse can be reframed in order to reach more audiences. The panelists – Ms. Susana Hancock, linguist and youth climate activist, Ms. Camile Clarke, 2020 UN CC:Learn champion and geography teacher, Mr. Washington Zhakata, Climate Change Director at Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Environment , and Mr. Nikhil Seth, UNITAR Executive Director – provided good insights into the topic, such as the need of tailoring the message in accordance with each specific audience.
At the end of the event, partners discussed how they could best collaborate with UN CC:Learn in this new phase. As a follow-up to that discussion, three separate partner consultations were held in May and June 2022. Each consultation focused on one of the following three key areas:
- Learning for countries
- Learning through youth
- Learning for citizens and professionals.
The consultations set up collaborative dialogue spaces for partners to exchange ideas, suggestions, and synergies in their work, and also laid the groundwork for future partnerships to scale-up current initiatives and broader impact.
Moving forward, UN CC:Learn will keep bringing partners together in these dialogues spaces and drawing relevant inputs and insights that will help inform its work.