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← Climate Justice and Active Citizenship

Climate change, human rights and equality

The Sustainable Development Goals are seventeen goals the United Nations agreed in 2015, and they apply to every country, India included. Read them as a list of things every person should be able to count on: health, school, clean water, work, a safe place to live. This activity assumes learners have met the goals before. The seventeen icons are on slide 3 of the slideshow.

How it runs

The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.

  1. 01

    Put learners into groups of three or four. Give each group a copy of Connections (Activity sheet 1).

  2. 02

    For each goal, the group writes one way the climate emergency touches it. Goal 3, Good Health and Well-being, is filled in as an example.

  3. 03

    Work fast. If nothing comes for a goal, leave it and move on — but push them to attempt as many as they can. Some are far easier than others.

  4. 04

    Then score each connection between -10 and +10. How strong is the link, and does climate change harm that goal or help it? There is no right answer, but some links are clearly stronger than others.

  5. 05

    Finally, with a coloured pen or pencil, highlight any goal where they think the effect lands on every person on earth equally. If it does not land equally, leave it unmarked.

Talking about it

Discussion points, worked examples and the handouts the manual prints with this session.

Points for discussion

  • Ask for about five goals with the strongest links to the climate emergency. For each one: what is the link, why is it strong, and is it a harm or a help? Write the goal on the board, or stick up its icon.
  • Then ask whether those links land on everybody equally. The answer is no every time, though the size of the gap changes from goal to goal.

Take the worked example, Goal 3. Hotter, wetter weather suits mosquitoes, and mosquitoes carry malaria, dengue and chikungunya. But the illness does not land evenly. It lands hardest where water stands beside the house, where there is no net and no coil, where a week in bed means a week without wages, and where the nearest doctor who can be paid for is far away. The mosquito is the same everywhere. What happens next is not.

The sheet has three columns: the goal, one way it connects to the climate emergency, and a score between +10 and -10. Leave the middle column blank where nothing comes. The goals run in their usual order. 1. No Poverty

2. Zero Hunger

3. Good Health & Well-being — In some places hotter and wetter weather spreads mosquito-borne disease such as malaria and dengue. Score: -5. 4. Quality Education

5. Gender Equality

6. Clean Water & Sanitation

7. Affordable & Clean Energy 8. Decent Work & Economic Growth 9. Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure 10. Reduced Inequalities

11. Sustainable Cities & Communities 12. Responsible Consumption & Production 13. Climate Action

14. Life Below Water

15. Life on Land

16. Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions 17. Partnerships for the Goals

Where this comes from

Bridge the Gap is a compilation. This is what the manual records for this session.

The manual prints no source for this session. It is published here as Swechha has used it, adapted over years of classroom work; if you recognise its origin, tell us and we will credit it.

Before you start sets out where the compendium as a whole comes from.

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