As a result of being part of this initiative, the department is highlighting its dedication towards tackling climate change through education, lowering its organisational carbon emissions, and its commitment to inspiring its learners to working towards a zero-carbon future.
The fourth annual Carbon Literacy Action Day (CLAD) took place on Thursday 14th November 2024, coinciding with COP29, the UN Conference of the Parties and largest climate event of the year.
The Carbon Literacy Action Day is The Carbon Literacy Project’s response to the annual COP conference, where learners from all walks of life, sectors, genders, ages and nations all around the world, completed Carbon Literacy training simultaneously, to become certified as Carbon Literate. As part of their training day, learners made pledges to reduce their own carbon footprints, using their developed understanding of climate change to take action in both their personal and professional lives.
Thus, as leaders gather at COP29 to discuss, deliberate and negotiate on climate policy, with uneven success, Carbon Literacy learners all over the world learnt, collaborated and became empowered to take impactful action on climate change.
Carbon Literacy® is relevant climate education for everyone and equates to a day’s worth of learning and action on climate change. It is defined as, “An awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis.”
The Department of Geography and Environment’s activity for the Action Day was to train 40 undergraduate students in Carbon Literacy. This allows students to relate their learning on topics such as climate change, sustainability, and development, to their everyday lives and to their future employment. Moreover, given that climate-related news can often be very negative, it aids student wellbeing by supporting them to take authentic, realistic actions in their own lives and communities, according to their own values.
Richard Hodgkins, Reader in Climate Futures at Loughborough University, commented: “This year’s cohort of Carbon-Literate undergraduates have pledged realistic, achievable actions which will prevent emissions approximately equivalent to four passenger return flights from Paris to New York. They recognise that normalising climate-compatible behaviour contributes toward a social mandate for change: they are making the difference that they can make, and they are demonstrating the awareness, understanding, skills and even the courage to do the work the world needs.”
Dave Coleman, Co-Founder and Managing Director of The Carbon Literacy Project, said: “Carbon Literacy is not about creating a future that is ‘slightly less bad than it could be’. It’s about creating a future that is secure, and inspiring, and actually better than the recent past. Carbon Literacy is a unique approach - not-for-profit, co-developed by a working group drawn from all sectors and audiences. It is scalable and adaptable, of immediate relevance as it is developed by the audiences receiving it, and tested and proven in use, by thousands of organisations, and tens of thousands of citizens, all acting in concert to deliver immediate solutions to the climate crisis, both now and in the future.”