The Youth Advisory Panel (YAP) of Plan International Nigeria has called on the federal government to inculcate climate change into school’s curriculum to enable young people understand the need to think innovation that is environment friendly, stressing the need for citizens especially the youth to be green knowledge aware.
Chairperson of YAP, Faith Adaji, made the call Wednesday in Abuja, during its activity to commemorate the 2023 IYD with the theme “Green Skills for Youth: Towards a Sustainable World.”
Adaji re-emphasised that green skills education is very important today considering the climate change situation Nigeria is faced with, regretting that young children have no knowledge of climate change even when they are also affected by the negative impact on their lives.
Adaji urged the government to lay emphasis on the green ecological system to enable unlimited jobs creation that will address the problem of unemployment as well as create the green desired economy.
“If green skills are taught in schools from primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education you will see that whatever innovative change that people come up with will have lasting impact on the environment.
“The role of education in fostering and leveraging the green economy for especially young women and girls is very important and cannot be overemphasized hence the role education plays in ensuring that skills necessary to ensure a green economy and green sustainable environment is in place,”she said.
In his remarks, a member of the Nigerian Youth Parliament (NYP) Marwan Umar, noted that climate change is currently a global priority with lots of funding being disbursed to address issues in these areas, calling on the government to enable communities have access to collaborating with the ministry of environment at state levels to revive tree planting culture that will avoid climate mitigation as well as get afforestation processes in our environment.
“The Youth Parliament is putting forward recommendations for policies to include climate change knowledge into school’s curriculum at the basic level so as to have more young people, most especially adolescent girls in school to be climate change aware and advocates.
“There is the need for awareness creation on environmental protection in order for people to know where to deposit waste to save our community. This is why we are canvassing that young people’s organizations have access to more funding for volunteers at the community levels to promote climate change awareness,”he said.
Earlier, the Director, Programme Quality and Influencing at Plan International Nigeria, Helen Idiong, noted that green skills has enormous benefit in employing the youths and also make them more innovative, adding that the impact of climate change in Nigeria in the next few years cannot be predicted hence, why youths must be encouraged to be climate aware and think out innovations to make Nigeria better.
“The youth day celebration is organized to make youths understand that they have the potential to make this country better, and the more we interact with them as a nation the more we can help them live up to their full potentials for the betterment of the nation
“If green skills are infused into school’s curriculum children can have ideas formed over the years on what to do after graduation and so the problem of unemployment will be solved,”she assured.
Country Director of Plan International, Charles Emmanuel Usie, stated that climate change has brought irreversible damage and destruction to Nigeria, the planet , lifestyle, food system, et all, hence why its organization canvass for adaptation and mitigation.
“This is why we canass for all to adapt to the current situation of how our climate has been distorted and then mitigate to reduce the impact of the changes of climate change on our lives,” he stressed.
