Tag: world environment day

Climate change, education, Environment, Events

Midlands Climate Change Education

Coinciding with this year’s World Environment Day, we are running a workshop in Nottingham Road with teachers from schools in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands area. We are proudly one of over 2000 events that have registered so far for WED2026!

The Midlands Climate Change Education Project is a partnership project offering both theoretical and practical grounding to support teachers in responding to the question: What can I do about climate change?

23 teachers from 17 schools are participating. The project is funded by the Kings Foundation, whose environmental education work is grounded in the rehabilitation of the Kings Wetland in Nottingham Road.

In May participating teachers attended online sessions which provided the foundation for the practical workshop. We covered Module A – The Problem – of the What I Can Do About Climate Change Edu-Action Programme offered by EASTER Action. During each session we screened two to three short videos, each followed by discussion, questions and answers.

The in-person workshop on 6 June is a key part of the programme. The focus of the day will be on setting up practical school climate change projects that will be taken forward between June and September. Teachers receive an Activity Guide with instructions for 15 hands-on activities, and we’ll do as many of them together as possible.

Over the next few months we will accompany the teachers as they put the new knowledge and skills into practice. Further online support and feedback sessions will provide an opportunity to share progress, reflect on project work, and consolidate learning.

We now look forward to meeting in person!

Please watch this space for feedback.

Climate change, Environment, Resources

World Environment Day 2022

The theme of this year’s World Environment Day is “Only One Earth“. Over the past year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, a United Nations organization) has released three key climate reports, that have one single, resounding message: We are in crisis. Or in the words of the UN Secretary General: this is “Code Red for humanity”.

As one of the IPCC support staff, I have read and re-read several drafts of these reports, as well as the Special Reports released in 2018 and 2019. “Every year matters!” the first one said. But a year ticked by. And another. And another. And another. The crisis is upon us, and still we are dilly dallying, carrying on as before. It scares me how much is known, and how little is being done. It is surreal.

This year Durban got flooded – one of the worst floods on record. But… we mopped up the mess, made (or started to make) repairs, and carried on. Six weeks later it happened again! Disasters like this will keep getting worse and happen more often.

Today, on World Environment Day, EASTER Action would like to thank and congratulate the hundreds of scientists who contributed towards the IPCC reports, who spent so much of their time and energy, often under extremely difficult situations, to bring together, assess and summarize the latest, up-to-date information on climate change, and to map out the options. Thank you, thank you, all you dear people! And well done! Thanks to you we know what to do next.

May the world listen to your warning, and do what needs to be done, to save this one and only earth, our home, and all its children.

We highly recommend these brief 2-3min trailers. They are beautifully made and give a fantastic overview of the current state of climate science.

The latest reports (2021/2022):
The Physical Science Basis
Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
Mitigation of Climate Change
The Special Reports (2018/2019):
Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C
Special Report on the Oceans and Cryosphere
Special Report on Land
About the IPCC and the current assessment cycle.

See the IPCC channel for more videos on the various press conferences etc.

Also see the channels of other related UN organizations: UNEP, UNFCCC and WMO.

Biodiversity, Environment, Resources

World Environment Day 2020

The theme for this year’s World Environment Day is: It is the Time for Nature. This coronavirus pandemic is in many ways a result of humanity’s unsustainable relationship with nature. But it is also an opportunity to think carefully about where we are going.

On this day we would have loved to invite folks to a live event at one of our beautiful nature reserves, but here we all are, in lock-down! Instead we decided to release a 40 min video on “how all living things on Earth are connected in the web of life“, by looking more closely at the biggest cog in this complex clockwork: insects.

After a brief introduction on species population trends, biodiversity and biomass, the presentation goes through some of the major roles that insects play in the food web and in nature generally, which then clearly points to what we can do to help and “how we can act for nature“.

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