Handbook of Climate Change Communication: Vol. 2 by Walter Leal Filho Evangelos Manolas Anabela Marisa Azul Ulisses M. Azeiteiro & Henry McGhie

Author:Walter Leal Filho, Evangelos Manolas, Anabela Marisa Azul, Ulisses M. Azeiteiro & Henry McGhie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

4.3 France

Until very recently, there were few national policies or school activities on environmental issues in France. However, increasingly, the presence of members of the Green Party within the current government, and hosting the UN COP21 in Paris in 2015, compelled France to introduce wide-ranging measures to integrate sustainable development into all school curricula from September 2016.

The Ministry of Education has led this, interpreting the vision and role of ESD, determining how best it should be integrated into the school system. It oversees a network of regional committees, who in turn connect school directors with the Ministry unit in charge of ESD. The Ministry of Education subsidises specialist ESD associations such as the Réseau Écoles et Nature and the Union Nationale des Centres Permanents d’Initiatives pour l’Environnement to support school directors in delivering ESD activity. A voluntary E3D labelling of “eco” schools is awarded when there is different levels of activity across the classroom, the school and the integration of the school into society. The target is to double the number of E3D labelled schools in each school district between 2015 and 2017 (Ministère de l’Éducation nationale 2015a, b). The French Ministry of Education has also introduced a scheme to reward the best environmental educational projects, and stimulated interest in ESD through a network of “eco-delegates” in middle and high schools (Ministère de l’Éducation nationale 2015a, b).

Like the Netherlands, education around climate change in France is embedded in the broader context of sustainable development. The French vision for ESD is to foster understanding of human-environment interaction and interdependence, and stimulate responsibility towards the environment through behaviour. The main modes of integration are through the curriculum, supported by interdisciplinary teaching focused on “ecological transition and sustainable development”. Climate change is mostly taught as part of the geography curriculum, but also appears in science classes in middle school (Ministère de l’Éducation nationale 2015a, b). Climate change is also taught in the context of “global change”, development, urbanisation, deforestation and land use change, as well as the risks induced by climate change and the impact on humans (Ministère de l’Éducation nationale 2015a, b). Learning is focused on differentiating the natural climate change cycles and climate change due to human activity, which indicates an acknowledgement of anthroprogenic climate change (Ministère de l’Éducation nationale 2015a, b). The curriculum encompasses notions of adaptation, mitigation, vulnerability and resilience examining the contribution of local, regional and national policies (Ministère de l’Éducation nationale 2015a, b).

While CCE is rounded and addresses all the dimensions outlined in the CCE benchmark, some of the content is only taught in optional trans-disciplinary classes, such as in the case of climate impacts on biodiversity (i.e. linking life and earth sciences, technology and language classes) or the history and debates around the notion of climate change (i.e. life and Earth sciences linked with physics, chemistry, history, geography, mathematics, French and education to media and information). This comprehensiveness may stem from France’s increasing recognition of the importance of CCE, however a strongly “top-down” approach may stifle heuristic learning.

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