Climate change is at work all over the world and its consequences are already quite visible. It affects us all and should be a priority for our education systems, as recalled in Article 12 of the Paris Agreement, which emphasizes the importance of climate change education.
The Office for Climate Education (OCE), created in 2018 at the initiative of La main à la pâte Foundation and the scientific community, is an ambitious response to this global need.
The OCE aims to organize strong international cooperation between scientific bodies, NGOs and educational institutions to educate present and future generations about climate change, to equip them with the tools of understanding and action to protect them from preconceptions, ideologies or irrationality, and to prepare them to live in a changing world.
"It is essential that teachers around the world have access to free, quality educational resources and professional development based on the best climate and pedagogical research".
Eric Guilyardi, President of the OCE, climatologist and lead author of the IPCC. The OCE and its partners have a mission to promote climate change education worldwide through :
Based in Paris, the operational OCE team coordinates a worldwide network of national and regional partners. This network is supported by both the scientific community (laboratories, academies of science, IPCC, etc.), NGOs and local or national educational authorities. This community of practice, accompanied by the OCE, ensures that schools get moving to face future challenges in a sustainable and holistic way, deeply rooted in their social environment and local communities.
In 2020, the Office for Climate Education became a category 2 center under the auspices of UNESCO. This institutionalization of the OCE aims to promote climate change education at the international level, with a special focus on emerging countries.
Set up your own fish and vegetable farms at school!
This project is about students building gardens at home. It leads to concrete action regarding local food production and the transmission of local knowledge and habits about food.
Biodigesters produce gas for cooking, which helps families within the community to change their cooking habits to more sustainable ones.
Understanding the effects of climate change in ocean an cryosphere.
The Regulating Role of the Ocean on the Climate - Sébastien Carassou This video is part of the Billes de sciences series, produced by the Fondation La Main à la
The students create a conceptual framework showing the scientific basis of climate change and its impacts on land and services provided, and figuring out the causes and consequences of the different phenomena.
Discover how level rise is expected to affect five different coastal regions in the world.
Urban areas are getting hotter, a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Our multimedia animation offers an engaging way to explore what UHI is, why it occurs, and what can be done to mitigate its impact.
This is the first teacher's guide book of the collection “The climate in our hands”, a series of volumes on the topic of climate change. The aim of this guide book is to support teachers in carrying out a range of activities on climate change and the ocean and cryosphere in their classrooms, and targets students from the upper end of primary school to the end of lower-secondary school (ages 9 to 15).
The Oceanic Machine - Sébastien Carassou This video is part of the Billes de sciences series, produced by the Main à la pâte Foundation.