Education News South Africa

ClimateScience Olympiad calls for youth to help change the world

The ClimateScience Olympiad, which kicks off this month, aims to engage and empower 10,000 youth globally to come up with actionable solutions to climate change. The finalists of this online competition will go on to compete during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) for a pool prize of $10,000.
ClimateScience Olympiad calls for youth to help change the world

Combating the lack of climate change education is an urgent issue that ClimateScience, the non-profit organisation initiating the Olympiad, directly tackles by offering young people the opportunity to make innovative proposals for solving climate change.

Fully free and online competition

The ClimateScience Olympiad (CSO) is entirely free, takes place online and consists of three phases, the first being the Qualifying Phase. Running from January to September 2021, where youths aged 14-25 sign up and participate. Participants can either compete as individuals or in teams of two to write proposals to climate change-related problem statements ranging from biodiversity to carbon capture. The top 5% of participants will progress to the semi-finals in October, where they will undergo an interview based on their proposals. Finally, the 50 highest scoring semi-finalists will then be invited to compete in the finals in November during COP26, Covid-19 allows.

For Eric Steinberger, CEO and co-founder of ClimateScience, “the ClimateScience Olympiad provides youth with an opportunity to put creative thought and enthusiasm for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects to deal with real, urgent global climate change problems.”

According to a survey conducted by Teach the Future, only 4% of students ‘feel they know a lot about climate change’ even though almost 7 in 10 respondents say that they ‘would like to learn more about the environment.’

Investing in climate change education is one of the most efficient emissions reductions strategies. According to a recent study by San José State University (United States), if 16% of high school students in high and middle-income countries had access to climate change education, by 2050 we could see a 37% reduction in global GHG emissions.

ClimateScience is a global charity that creates free climate education resources that are engaging, understandable and science-based. ClimateScience’s courses, children's books, YouTube videos and social media content focus on solutions to climate change and are aimed at empowering youth to take positive climate action.

Register

For more information on ClimateScience, or to register for the Olympiad, visit: https://climatescience.org.

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