The Climate Change Law will force the inclusion of environmental education plans in schools, institutes and universities

The negotiations on the Climate Change Law reach their final stretch. This Tuesday the last presentations have been made and the latest amendments have been approved, focused mainly on environmental education and governance. Thus, with the support of PSOE, Unidas Podemos, ERC, Bildu, PNV, Equo-Más País and Teruel Existe, it has been supported that the new law addresses the climate emergency in a transversal way and takes it to the classrooms and universities of Spain, where teachers and students will receive training soaked by the criteria of sustainability.

According to the text of the approved amendment, the education system will have a “review” on the treatment given to climate change and sustainable development within the basic curriculum to include a “transversal” vision of the problem. In this way, it is intended that the climate emergency is present in some way in all subjects at each of the academic levels. To this end, “the Government, within the scope of its competences, will promote actions that guarantee the adequate training of teachers”.

The amendment also puts the focus on universities and speaks of a “review” of the curricula so that their contents are “coherent” with the climate crisis situation. Likewise, the energy transition situation has pushed the political forces to promote a change in the National Catalogue of Professional Qualifications and in the catalogue of training offers, so that the last step of the Spanish education system allows the creation of new professional profiles “typical of environmental sustainability” and adapted to the new energy and social model.

Serafín Huertas, technician in Environmental Education and member of the state platform EA26, celebrates that the framework law that will serve to mitigate climate change in the coming decades does not leave aside environmental education. “The revision of the catalogue of professional qualifications is something very positive, because it gives us the possibility of generating new profiles in a world that is already in constant change. The new professional profiles have to adapt to this, new jobs must appear that have to do with the new mobility, the new energy model, but also with teaching and with new forms of leisure, “argues the expert.

Although the text of the amendment is brief and the nature of this law suggests that new broader legislative texts will be born from it that give meaning to it, experts in environmental education miss that the article in question focuses on other aspects that go beyond training. “We also need to educate on the capacity to act on climate change,” says Huertas. “The education system must go to the root and explain why this climate crisis occurs, which is the capitalist and extractivist model.” “It is impossible to propose a change in the model of society if it is not through education. Laws and decrees can be passed, but the transformations we need can only be consolidated with education.”

A committee of experts on climate change

Tuesday’s presentations have also approved Article 33 without any modification. This is a crucial point included in the government agreement between the Socialist Party and Unidas Podemos, the creation of a committee of experts on climate change and energy. In this way, the approval has been given to the creation of this body, whose functions will be to “evaluate and make recommendations” to the Government on all the policies they promote in relation to their environmental impact. This group of experts must have an equal composition and will be responsible for making an annual report on the measures of the Executive and their ecological implications.

This is one of the great demands of the environmental movement. However, the way in which the article has been approved has not ended up liking all the political formations of the left. Thus, from Equo-Más País they consider that the law must guarantee the independence of this group of experts and for them they demand that the article specify that the agency is provided with specific resources and funds that guarantee that “it has its own resources to be able to work, meet and issue reports that guide the government’s action in terms of ecological transition”.

Climate change comes to finance

The same parliamentary forces – PSOE, Unidas Podemos, ERC, Bildu, PNV and Teruel Existe – have brought forward an amendment related to the inclusion of climate change as a risk factor within the financial system. In this way, the Bank of Spain, the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) and the General Directorate of Insurance and Pension Funds must include climate change in their risk assessments for the Spanish financial system, as well as propose economic solutions to combat the climate crisis. It is understood that this measure will help to gradually shift investments towards other sectors that are less harmful to the environment.

In addition, the presentations on Tuesday in Congress have given the go-ahead to reform the public procurement model, so that all the specifications have criteria for reducing emissions and environmental impact. The Administration, therefore, must ensure that, one year after the Climate Change Law is approved, all contractors comply with the new environmental obligations and provide services linked to decarbonization. This will have significant implications in a number of areas, ranging from school and hospital canteens, which will have to ensure that food has a minimal carbon footprint, to transport services, which will have to have vehicles, as far as possible, free of _CO2 emissions.

After Tuesday’s votes, the Climate Change Law is entering its final phase. In the absence of a debate on the final provisions of the rule, the Commission for the Ecological Transition will have to give the last review of the agreements that during the last months have been shaping up behind closed doors in the Congress of Deputies. The votes have drawn a clear block made up of Unidas Podemos, PSOE, ERC, Bildu and Teruel Existe, to which parties such as the PNV, Cs or Equo-Más País have sometimes been added, which has remarked its ecological position and has demanded that the law increase its ambition. While the PP has extended its hand on specific issues related to growth and sustainable development, Vox has shown its denialism.

Source: Public