Climate emergency training can drive decade of positive action for all our futures - Catherine Gee

The stark warning in the recently published report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is, “Climate Change is already a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet”, urges us all to take action now to secure our own futures.

Catherine Gee, Deputy Chief Executive, Keep Scotland Beautiful

The report calls for a ‘decade of action’ to turn things around where possible, and this is something we at Keep Scotland Beautiful strongly support.

Set against everything else going on in the world, the warnings in the IPCC report seem very bleak. People need to hear the success stories, they want to be inspired by actions being taken by others, and there is now, more than ever, a real desire to harness the energy that people have to stand up for what they value. At a recent event we hosted with YoungScot and YouthLink Scotland, as part of a COP26 Youth Climate Programme, the young people clearly had a real desire and ask for us to turn the messages into positive ones.

One of the solutions to the often anxiety-inducing negative climate news is through good information and education. Over the past two decades we have supported educators and young people through our Eco-Schools programme to understand and take action on climate change. In more recent years we have delivered Climate Ready Classrooms in secondary schools to empower and enable positive change. We help people get to grips with the, often complex, climate change narrative, and we provide tools for supporting learning in the formal context. We will continue to do this as we bring our Climate Action Schools work to the fore of what we do.

We know that this isn’t enough if we are to upskill the population of Scotland to ensure we achieve Net Zero by 2045. We need to scale up and reach more people, of all ages and backgrounds, and this year, we are excited to be able to do just that.

Thanks to a number of key partnerships, we are now able to bring climate action skills to people in their homes, in the workplace, and across our communities. We are offering the opportunity for people, of all ages, to learn new skills and become Carbon Literate.

We are currently running Climate Emergency Training for young people and educators, for youth workers and those working with young people and for those working in the tourism sector. We are also delivering bespoke training for clients across a range of sectors, from local authorities to big business. And, excitingly, in February we announced that in partnership with Skills Development Scotland we are offering free training for all those people across Scotland over the age of 25, with a particular focus on those working in, or having previously worked in, the transport, energy or construction sectors.

Through our partnership with The Carbon Literacy Project, our courses are accredited and to receive Carbon Literate certification participants must carry out an assessment in which they select a personal and a group action to reduce carbon emissions – driving individual and collective change across the country.

We know that we can answer the call of our young people to frame climate change positively. We believe that through our programme of climate emergency training we can help to combat climate anxiety, climate change apathy and that by providing practical advice on what individuals can actually do, we can all make a difference.

So, let’s dig deep and commit to a decade of positive action for our climate, our planet and our future.

Catherine Gee, Deputy Chief Executive, Keep Scotland Beautiful

Information on courses and dates can be found at www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/climateemergencytraining