Philippines: The Environment Management Bureau wants climate change integrated in tertiary curriculum
Tuguegarao City -- The Environment Management Bureau (EMB) Region 2 has urged the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to incorporate climate change adaptation subjects to tertiary courses curriculum.
Regional Climate Change Coordinator Romeo Fragata said that climate change is one of the pressing issues worldwide that need to be addressed to mitigate its effect to human and the environment.
Fragata said several moves have been initiated by different groups and organizations to help mitigate and adapt climate change effects. However, education could be a prime shield to empower people to act and learn to save themselves and the environment to where they live in.
“The elementary and secondary levels have already started integrating climate change topics in some of their subjects, so I guess tertiary institutions should also follow,” Fragata said.
He said the said topic could be integrated in the National Service Training Program through conduct of lectures and advocacy campaigns.
He also said that it can be incorporated in other subjects in relation to environmental management, preservation and conservation, as well as on health and sanitation.
On the other hand, CHED Cagayan Valley Regional Director Evelyn Pascua said that climate change topics are already integrated in some subject areas in the tertiary level and there are fora conducted in different universities and colleges on climate change.
Pascua said that the CHED is studying the possibility of issuing a directive obliging state universities and colleges to integrate climate change in their curriculum.
EMB is pushing for the integration of climate change adaptation and mitigation to education institutions to effect the provisions of the Climate Change Act or the Republic Act No. 9729 which needs advocacy campaigns to all sectors, especially to the young ones.
(OTB/PIA-2)