Climateandeducation.org launches to close the gap between the climate change and education sectors.
LONDON, 13 March 2026 - A new global platform designed to help ensure education is made more resilient to climate change was launched today at a time when nearly every child globally faces a least one climate shock a year with learning often impacted. [1]
The Climate Change and Education Platform, supported by Save the Children, the Green Climate Fund, and the Global Partnership for Education, aims to address the need to better integrate education into global climate efforts and to raise awareness among climate policymakers that education is critical to achieving adaptation and resilience.
Education is one of the sectors most affected by climate change [2], with climate shocks disrupting schooling for an estimated 242 million children worldwide in 2024 alone.
About one billion children – nearly one in two – live in extremely high-climate risk countries and cyclones alone caused about US$4 billion in annual losses to the education sector.
However education remains largely absent from global climate policy and financing frameworks and only 1.5% of global climate finance reached the education sector.
The new website provides tools, evidence and guidance for governments, climate funds, development agencies, and civil society organisations.
It also highlights the urgent financing gap. For although nearly 90% of countries identify education as a priority adaptation sector, fewer than 30% cost these priorities in their National Adaptation Plans, making them ineligible for most climate finance streams.
The Climate Change and Education platform (ClimateandEducation.org) aims to close this gap as the first global hub of resources connecting education systems with climate resilience and adaptation planning.
Nick Ireland, Director, Climate Change, Save the Children, said:
“Every child deserves a safer and brighter future. When we protect the climate, we protect childhood itself—safe homes, healthy bodies, quality education, and hopeful dreams that are not washed away by floods or broken by droughts.
Education is critical climate adaptation infrastructure. Countries cannot achieve long-term climate goals without protecting learning and strengthening the ability of young people to navigate an increasingly unstable climate.
Half of the world’s children live in countries at high risk of climate impacts. Yet climate plans rarely address education systems. This platform gives climate decision-makers the tools they need to change that.”
The platform is hosted on weADAPT – a climate change knowledge management website with over 10,000 existing users, across more than 2,000 organisations in 141 countries.
It includes curated research, practical tools for integrating education into National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), case studies from climate-vulnerable countries, and step-by-step guidance on how to access climate finance.
The platform launches ahead of global climate milestones including preparations for COP31 being held in Türkiye in November.
Key features of the new global platform include:
A global evidence library on climate impacts on education
Practical guidance for integrating education into NAPs, NDCs, and climate investment frameworks
News and analysis on climate and education from around the world
Case studies from climate-vulnerable countries
ClimateandEducation.org was developed by the Climate Smart Education Systems Initiative, which works to strengthen countries’ capacity to mainstream climate change adaptation and environmental sustainability into education sector plans, budgets, and strategies.
The Initiative is supported by the Green Climate Fund, the Global Partnership for Education and Save the Children. It will highlight work from major new initiatives - the Climate-Smart Education Systems Initiative (funded by GPE and implementd by Save the Children, UNESCO and UNESCO-IIEP) and the Building the Climate Resilience of Children and Communities through the Education Sector (funded by GPE and GCF and implemented by Save the Children. It will continue to be updated with resources and stories from these and other projects around the world.
References:
