The United Nations children’s agency has urged the Philippines to make education more climate smart and resilient, after a report showed the Philippines ranking number two in the region on the Children’s Climate Risk Index.
United Nations Children’s Fund regional director for East Asia and the Pacific June Kunugi said that as typhoons and heat waves contribute to fewer hours for children in the classroom, “looking at other ways to maintain continuity and learning is trying to make education more climate smart and resilient.”
Data from the Department of Education released in November indicated that up to 26 learning days were lost due to class suspensions in several schools nationwide, caused by typhoons and other natural calamities.
The UNICEF Children’s Climate Risk Index measures the risk of climate change on children in 163 countries. It considers two main factors: exposure of children to climate and environmental hazards, shocks, and stresses, and their vulnerability.
The top Asian countries at risk from climate change, according to a UNICEF report, are Myanmar, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and North Korea.
The UNICEF also called on the Philippine government to provide better strategic solutions and more investments for more sustained development of data about children, as there are still key gaps and issues in terms of granularity, periodicity and timeliness, accessibility, reliability and consistency.
The impact of the changing climate on schoolchildren needs greater attention more than ever, as we have witnessed how an education system that is neither climate smart nor resilient ends up losing precious days for learning to typhoons and other natural calamities, which for a country like the Philippines should no longer be considered as surprises.
Aside from improvements in the methods of teaching and learning, the infrastructure of our schools and cities will also need to be optimized so that Filipinos can deal with these expected disruptions as we go about our daily lives.*
