COP30: Put Children’s Education at the Heart of Climate Discussions in Belém
The gathering in Belém for COP30 presents a decisive opportunity to reframe how global leaders consider the intersection of climate and learning. For advocates, the objective is clear: move education from the margins of climate policy into the central agenda. Evidence presented by humanitarian and education actors highlights that climate shocks in recent years have become a leading cause of learning disruption for students worldwide.
Consider the stark figures: 242 million students experienced interruptions linked to climate-related events in 2024, and a single month of extreme heat in May 2024 affected the learning of more than 118 million children. These numbers are not abstractions; they translate into lost classrooms, displaced teachers and families, and a surge in protection risks such as child labor and early marriage. The message entering COP30 is that the cost of inaction is both human and economic.
Why education must be reframed as climate action
Education equips learners with the skills to adapt, innovate and protect communities. When national climate strategies fail to include child-sensitive education measures, they miss a multiplier effect: resilient schooling supports livelihoods, health and civic stability. Yet analysis of climate finance up to March 2023 found that only 2.4% of funding from major multilateral climate funds supported child-responsive activities — a gap that must be closed.
- Policy alignment: Education must be integrated into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) to secure predictable funding.
- Funding reform: Donors should earmark climate finance for resilient school infrastructure and continuity-of-learning programs.
- Child participation: Young people must have mechanisms to influence climate policy, ensuring solutions meet their needs.
Practical advocacy at COP30 should emphasize specific entry points: embedding education in loss-and-damage assessments, creating multi-sector co-financing models, and promoting curricular reforms that make learners climate-ready. Organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children and the Global Partnership for Education have long argued that education is not a peripheral social good but a core resilience investment.
Case in point: a regional consortium in the Amazon mobilized local NGOs and faith-based partners to retrofit schools with cooling designs and flood-proofed storage for learning materials. That intervention reduced absenteeism during the rainy season and improved community confidence in school safety. This example illustrates how targeted investment both preserves learning and protects livelihoods.
- Integrate education into climate finance architectures.
- Prioritize continuity of learning during emergencies.
- Elevate child and youth voices within climate negotiations.
Placing children’s education at the heart of COP30 means rethinking budgets, plans and metrics so that learning continuity and resilience are non-negotiable elements of climate action.
How Climate Shocks Disrupt Learning: Case Studies and Local Narratives
To understand policy urgency, concrete stories matter. Imagine Ana, a school coordinator in a riverside community near Belém. During a severe flood season, Ana watched classrooms become storage for displaced families. Teachers were reallocated to coordinate shelter activities, and lessons were suspended for weeks. This local snapshot mirrors thousands of similar disruptions globally and underlines how climate events cascade through education ecosystems.
Disruptions manifest in multiple ways: damaged buildings, lost learning materials, teacher absenteeism due to health impacts, and families prioritizing short-term survival over schooling. The risks multiply for marginalized learners: girls, children with disabilities, indigenous communities and those displaced by conflict. In many contexts, climate stress exacerbates existing inequalities and undermines decades of progress in access and learning outcomes.
Illustrative examples and lessons learned
Several documented interventions show how education systems can buffer shocks. A pilot in West Africa combined emergency cash transfers with mobile learning kits; children were able to continue lessons while families rebuilt livelihoods. Another program used community radio and low-tech packets to maintain literacy during prolonged heatwaves that made school buildings unusable in daytime.
- Flood-resilient construction: Elevated classrooms reduced closure days in coastal Brazil.
- Alternative learning channels: Radio and distributed packs preserved continuity when teachers were unavailable.
- Community-led protection: Parent-teacher groups coordinated safe pathways to school after disasters.
Partnerships amplified these responses. International NGOs collaborated with local actors to supply materials and training, while donors adapted grants to cover both reconstruction and psychosocial support for students and teachers. Organizations such as Room to Read and The LEGO Foundation have invested in creative learning tools that work even in disrupted settings.
At the classroom level, attention to teacher well-being is critical. Teachers experiencing trauma cannot effectively teach. Programs that provided counseling and flexible schedules saw faster recovery in attendance rates and learning outcomes. Anecdotally, Ana’s school reported a quicker rebound once a small fund covered temporary salaries and peer-led psychosocial sessions.
- Prioritize teacher support to maintain instructional quality.
- Use blended, low-tech solutions to bridge short-term closures.
- Engage community structures to protect vulnerable learners.
These practices show that resilience is not a single intervention but a portfolio of actions that protect learning and strengthen social cohesion — a set of priorities COP30 negotiators must endorse.
Policy Levers for Climate-Responsive Education: NDCs, NAPs and Financing
Transforming commitments into results requires clear policy instruments. National climate plans—particularly NDCs and NAPs—are pivotal platforms to institutionalize education-focused actions. Yet less than half of countries’ recent NDCs met child-sensitive standards. COP30 offers a strategic moment to press for better integration.
Policy levers include standardizing child-sensitive indicators, aligning budget lines across ministries, and creating inter-ministerial coordination mechanisms that bring education into disaster risk reduction and adaptation planning. Loss-and-damage frameworks should explicitly account for educational disruption costs and funding needs.
Recommended policy actions
Policymakers should adopt measurable steps that guarantee learning continuity and equity. Examples of actionable reforms include the following:
- Mandate education in NDCs: Require climate plans to specify targets for school resilience and continuity mechanisms.
- Ring-fence funding: Allocate a portion of adaptation finance for child-responsive education interventions.
- Cross-sector costing: Jointly estimate costs for interconnected services (water, sanitation, shelter and education) to unlock co-financing.
Donors must also adapt modalities: longer grant cycles, flexible reallocations during shocks, and incentives for multi-stakeholder consortia. In the past, siloed climate funds have constrained integrated approaches; remedying this requires deliberate policy design and political will.
Several civil society actors and funds are already mobilizing innovative financing. For instance, blended finance platforms have piloted investments in climate-resilient school infrastructure, while philanthropic partners offset teacher training costs during emergency response phases. These models need scaling.
- Establish child-sensitive indicators in climate planning.
- Introduce flexible finance instruments to sustain education during crises.
- Encourage multi-sector proposals to improve co-financing opportunities.
Integration will also require localizing decisions: national plans must empower municipalities and school communities to identify priorities and manage funds. Such decentralization enhances accountability and speeds recovery after shocks.
To support these policy shifts, stakeholders can learn from parallel education initiatives that address specific vulnerabilities, such as approaches to support for special educational needs and programs that address the impacts of economic shocks on early learning described in analyses of the financial crisis and early education.
Curriculum, Teacher Training and Infrastructure: Practical Interventions for Resilient Learning
Building resilient education systems is both technical and pedagogical. Curricula must evolve to include climate literacy, green skills and community resilience topics. Teachers require training not only in content but in emergency pedagogy and psychosocial support. Meanwhile, infrastructure investments must prioritize safe, low-carbon, and adaptable designs.
Embedding climate education into the curriculum does not mean adding a single course. It requires mainstreaming climate concepts across subjects—science, social studies, mathematics and arts—so that learners acquire practical problem-solving skills. Initiatives from organizations like Sesame Workshop demonstrate how age-appropriate media can introduce resilience concepts to younger children.
Practical steps schools can adopt
- Green skills in curricula: Incorporate project-based learning on local environmental challenges.
- Teacher professional development: Offer modules on emergency pedagogy and climate-informed classroom management.
- Resilient infrastructure: Retrofit schools for heat, flood and storm resilience with community labor and local materials.
Partnerships are central. Foundations and NGOs can provide curriculum resources, while groups such as Teach For All, Barefoot College and Children International bring expertise to scale teacher development and community training. The private sector, including philanthropic arms like The LEGO Foundation, can fund learning materials that are robust in emergency contexts.
Examples of scalable interventions include modular classrooms that can be reassembled after floods, solar-powered learning hubs for off-grid communities, and teacher networks that share rapid-response lesson plans. In urban settings, retrospective work in cities like Detroit highlights the value of community-centered planning to strengthen school-community links during crises, a concept explored further in studies on Detroit education strategies.
- Design curricula that are locally relevant and action-oriented.
- Provide continuous teacher support and peer learning communities.
- Invest in low-carbon, disaster-resistant school facilities.
Leveraging creative media, libraries and play-based resources from partners such as Room to Read and The LEGO Foundation accelerates engagement and learning. When children connect classroom knowledge to community adaptation projects, they become active agents of resilience rather than passive victims.
Resilience in education requires aligned curricula, empowered teachers and durable infrastructure—implemented through partnerships that respect local knowledge and scale proven innovations.
Mobilizing Finance, Partnerships and Youth Participation for Lasting Change
The final piece in making children’s education central to COP30 outcomes is mobilizing finance, forging partnerships and elevating youth voices. Financing must be predictable, flexible and scaled to match the need. Partnerships should bridge international donors, national governments, community organizations and private philanthropies to create coherent response ecosystems.
Several existing mechanisms can be adapted: multilateral climate funds can set targets for education allocation, while development banks can prioritize resilient school projects in their portfolios. Philanthropic actors and foundations often move faster than government processes and can seed innovations that prove scalable. For example, collaborations with entities like World Vision and Save the Children have demonstrated how combined protection and education programming reduces drop-out after disasters.
What effective mobilization looks like
- Blended finance models: Combine public grants, concessional loans and private capital to fund large-scale infrastructure and training.
- Local financing windows: Create sub-national funds that communities can access quickly for school repairs and continuity measures.
- Youth-led funding priorities: Include youth representatives in budget consultations to ensure funds address learning continuity and relevance.
Youth participation is not symbolic. Children and adolescents bring practical insights about barriers to learning in their communities. In Brazil, youth platforms have drafted concrete proposals that influenced municipal disaster response plans, and similar models should be institutionalized as child-friendly mechanisms within NDCs and NAPs.
Civil society, including coalitions led by the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies and organizations such as UNICEF, can advocate for integrating education into loss-and-damage strategies. This includes transparent costing exercises to determine how much it takes to protect schooling in fragile contexts, and how funds should be allocated to ensure equity.
- Secure multi-year commitments to sustain education during protracted crises.
- Encourage donors to fund integrated education, protection and health packages.
- Support youth councils that translate local priorities into national planning.
Practical resources and learning from other development areas can help: the FIFA Global Education Fund offers an example of how sport-related programming can be braided with schooling to maintain engagement, while analyses of educational opportunities in Burkina Faso illustrate how fragile contexts require tailored funding and programmatic approaches. Additionally, addressing systemic issues such as technology gaps and the AI shortcomings in education ensures that digital tools used in resilience strategies do not widen inequalities.
Partners from across sectors — from Sesame Workshop creating child-friendly content to Barefoot College deploying community solar solutions — demonstrate the breadth of actors needed. The final insight is clear: financing, partnerships and youth participation must be integrated so that COP30 produces binding commitments, not aspirational statements.
Mobilizing coordinated finance and inclusive partnerships—rooted in youth agency—transforms promises at COP30 into tangible protection of learning for millions of children.