A James Cook University researcher says teachers should be trained to talk about the Earth's water cycle in a more comprehensive manner – incorporating economic and political impacts – to better prepare their students for living in a world subject to climate change.
Associate Professor Helen Boon is an Education lecturer at JCU. She said climate change is impacting our survival through its effect upon water quality and availability.
"Despite the intimate connections of the water cycle, ecosystems, and human societies, contemporary water education at schools often remains anchored in a traditional view of the water cycle as a physical process separated from humans' impacts," said Dr Boon.
She said teaching the more comprehensive 'hydrosocial cycle' kept the scientific understandings but also added the social, economic, and political relations associated with water.
"Education based on pro-environmental tenets leads to pro- environmental behaviour. A curriculum using the hydrosocial cycle is a springboard for strategies to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change.
"This will help future generations learn behaviours to protect water quality and conserve water, both factors known to be at risk under climate change," said Dr Boon.
She said poor understanding of the hydrosocial cycle seems to be world-wide and evident across levels of education, politics, and governance.
"Tertiary education providers must emphasise courses that refine teachers' knowledge and skills about how they teach subjects related to the management of environmental resources," said Dr Boon.
She said for over 20 years, governments around the world have endorsed sustainable development as a policy goal accompanied by a range of international agreements, national strategies, and environmental laws.
"Yet over the same time the warming of the globe is continuing and the world is only inching towards environmental sustainability.
"To avert catastrophe, change must occur from the ground level—by helping school students from an early age to grasp the importance of adapting to and mitigating climate change."
