Course 1 – Climatic change: consequences, mitigation and adaptation

A new Culture of Climate change and its impacts in Europe

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Social & Nature foresees the development of a new Competences framework for trainers and for social workers, with two main targets:

  • The trainers of social workers:
    – will improve knowledge on climate change and its impacts
    – will acquire new skills on how to conduct teaching and training activities on this issue
  • Social workers themselves:
    – will acquire scientific knowledge on climate change
    – will develop new skills of how to develop techniques for awareness raising and empowerment of their specific public, precarious and vulnerable populations (final beneficiaries).

THE SOCIAL & NATURE APPROACH

We propose to follow a clear and simple approach of the issue of Climate change:

  1. Understanding Climate change phenomenon: causes and impacts. Further to being a major environmental problem, climate change has been recognised as a fundamental economic and social issue, impacting more severely the most vulnerable communities on our planet. Ηuman activity continues to be a main factor to climate change as human activity continues to contribute to an increased emission of greenhouse gases. It is therefore essential to understand the phenomenon of climate change, its causes and effects, and why its effects are more heavily experienced by the most vulnerable people and communities.
  1. Understanding the consequences on our daily life: Climate change does not only cause polar ice melt and sea level rising. It also impacts our daily life. It generates extreme weather events such as heat waves and droughts, increasing risks of forest fires, asking for better house insolation and better water management, or heavy rainfalls exposing large areas to floods devastating urban areas and crops. A large number of other mechanisms are involved and leads to numerous modifications and unbalances on ecosystems, on animal and plant species and on humans’ activities, health, food and well-being
  1. Mitigation: Social and Nature targets improvement of individual behaviors that contribute to climate change (I.e. activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions): mitigation is about taking part in the challenge of fighting against climate change by working individually and as a community on the causes of the problem.
  1. Adaptation to climate change impacts. Social and Nature also wants to help social workers better prepare their target groups to anticipate the adverse effects of climate change on their life: adaptation is acting to prevent or minimize possible damage due to climate change and its impacts.
  1. How to transfer my knowledge on climate change and encourage changes. Social and Nature should then help social workers to transmit their knowledge and engage their public targets in change.

CONTENT

The course consists of 4 modules:

  1. Understanding the phenomenon of climate change
  2. Mitigation: reducing our impact on climate change
  3. Adaptation: preventing and reducing Climate Change damages
  4. Fostering key sustainability competencies in educational settings

Each module present the same structure:

  1. An introduction
  2. Three or four Units a section devoted to specific aspects. Each unit includes:
    the presentation or explanation of topics and keywords, with links to additional sources of information
    a practical part with exercises or activities that can be used by trainers, with a section devoted to additional resources, specific documentation, links to websites, sources used.
  3. A test for self-assessment