Climatologists sound the alarm: the climate crisis is getting worse! Many well-documented educational materials have been produced and disseminated over the past years to raise awareness, educate and alert citizens. However, the impact of climate education remains minimal. Action is not happening and the climate crisis continues.

One way to explain the low impact of climate education is to consider that, in our consumerist and productivist society, citizens are not read, do not want and even reject climate learning. Another explanation, which we subscribe to, is that an important part of the responsibility lies with us who do climate education as climate educators, trainers or climate activists. It is true that climate education is not effective today, but this is not because of the reluctant attitude of citizens, but because we ourselves have failed to develop the right methods of awareness-raising and learning adapted to their realities (needs, fears, interests, motivations, aspirations).

The Climate Commons community therefore aims to develop new methods of climate education and action based on an empathic, human-centered pedagogy. This is an alternative to the « knowledge transfer » model that is dominant today. This model conceives climate education as an impersonal and uniform dissemination of information from the scientific community to the public. In other words, the transfer from a receptacle full of climate knowledge to an empty receptacle passively waiting to be filled with this knowledge…

For the development of human-centered educational activities, the Climate Commons community has chosen to place « collaborative design » methodologies (such as « Design Thinking ») at the center of its efforts. We therefore invite all educators, trainers and climate activists to use these methodologies with us:

This community of practice was developed within the project « Tiers-Lieux climatiques. L’Education au Changement climatique centrée sur l’Humain », implemented by REPER21 (Romania) in partnership with Canopée (France) and A SUD (Italy), with co-funding from the Erasmus+ program.

The overall objective of the project was to develop new educational competences (knowledge, skills, attitudes) enabling adult education actors to design and implement innovative, human-centered « Climate Change Education » (CCE) programs adapted to the relational spaces that adults freely frequent (third places).

As specific objectives, the project aimed at:

-> the experimentation, by 36 educators, of an CCE approach that places the diverse human experiences and needs of 90 adults attending 9 third places at the center of the educational process design;

-> sharing, in a freeway, the innovative practices, methods, tools experimented by the 36 educators and 90 adults in the different third places in an Open Educational Resource (OER) with the most permissive intellectual property (« free license »);

-> adapting the « climate third place » model to 30 European structures of different sizes managing relational spaces freely frequented by adults, training 60 staff/volunteers and the 3 partners.

Through the project, a « community of practice » has been developed, bringing together various European climate educators/activists in the field of climate education, sharing their experiences and mutually improving non-formal methods of informing, raising awareness and mobilizing citizens.

The project ran from 2022 to 2024 in Romania, France and Italy, with Erasmus+ co-funding of €250,000.