Publication date: 2021

Abstract

Education and training, alongside public and youth participation, are key to enabling effective and inclusive adaptation to climate change. Education and training are needed to help people understand the changing climate and develop the skills to act on that knowledge, to minimize risk and vulnerability and boost their adaptive capacity and resilience. Public participation, meanwhile, is integral to an inclusive adaptation process that ‘leaves no one behind’. In that regard, given the disproportionate impact of climate change on young people, and the immense potential of young people to contribute to adaptation solutions, youth participation in adaptation planning and action warrants particular attention.

Education and training initiatives related to climate change adaptation can cover a wide range of topics, be for various purposes and target many different audiences: from a general introduction to adaptation aimed at schoolchildren, to a specialized training programme for workers on how to cope with a specific climate change impact on their job. Similarly, public and youth participation can take a variety of forms throughout the adaptation process: from advocacy and activism, to participating in consultations and surveys, and designing and implementing adaptation solutions. Through this mosaic of topics, approaches and actors, adaptation action may be enhanced from the local up to the global level.