How Educating Girls Can Save Our Planet

Around the world, climate change has become a buzzword for social change. Some of the most top-of-mind solutions to climate change include cutting down on animal products, zero-waste initiatives, and government policies to reduce emissions. But one solution that tends to get overlooked is actually one that hits two birds with one stone: educating our girls.

Globally, girls make up the majority of the under-educated. According to UN Women, women make up over two-thirds of the 796 million illiterate worldwide. In rural areas, only 39% of all girls attend secondary school. This lack of education not only pushes women further down the poverty line but also exacerbates the effects of global warming.

Why a Lack of Girls’ Education Affects Us All

A recent study on Reuters states that for every additional year of schooling a girl receives, her country’s climate disaster resiliency can improve by 3.2 points. This is largely attributed to the fact that girls have a larger familial and societal impact than boys. For instance, in Mali, studies have shown that a woman earning $10 imparts nutritional and health benefits on her children that are comparable with a man earning $110. However, since most girls aren’t privy to education that would enable them to make a decent living, many are forced to stay at home and depend on finite natural resources like wood and charcoal. These practices can often encourage deforestation and increase global carbon emissions.

Conversely, according to Project Drawdown, educating girls can reduce carbon emissions by 59.6% by 2050. This is because, with higher educational attainment, girls have a bigger chance at living comfortably with access to a more sustainable lifestyle. If carbon emissions are not reduced, then we can expect more irreversible climate damage. These include the average climate temperature exceeding 2 degrees Celsius, prolonged heatwaves, rapid flooding, extended droughts, extreme rainfall, the melting of permafrost, and up to 12 inches of sea-level increase. Considering that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from the United Nations has already said humanity is at a “code red”, eco advocates say investments towards girls’ education are more meaningful than green technology.

What’s Being Done for Girls Today?

Thankfully, there already are ways that girls’ education can be more accessible and sustainable. Some of these ways – which are already being implemented – include designing education systems with gender parity. Creating gender-sensitive school management includes giving girls leadership roles, providing learning material that depicts girls as powerful and unconventional, and retraining teachers to cold call more often. All this is aimed at bolstering a young girl’s confidence and self-value. In the long run, such practises can help usher more women into continuing their education and fill more lucrative roles, like those in STEM.

These proactive and tangible efforts are necessary and long overdue. Especially as the majority of local school systems, including the local school system in South Africa may not be the most personal or efficient. However, when girls are treated as individuals, they are less likely to get discouraged or fall behind. This is apparent in the Bridge Uganda School, an organisation that pushes for low-cost education for all. The institution’s female students are among the country’s top performers. This is a huge improvement, given that, in the past, more than 700,000 girls in Uganda were out of school.

Of course, aside from creating more sensitive school systems, it would be best if girls were able to enjoy free education. Since the majority of women and girls living below the poverty line are unable to attend physical classes, governments and schools are trying to offer remote education. In Nigeria, some towns offer free classes via radio. Meanwhile, in Kenya, the government has begun developing educational materials that can be viewed via television or WhatsApp. These initiatives hope to bring education to girls when they can’t make it to the schools themselves.

If there was ever a multi-pronged solution that can address several generational dilemmas, it’s educating girls. Although it may be too late to reverse the effects of climate change, we still have time to stop it from getting worse. By empowering girls with the education that can better their lives, we’re also securing the future of our planet.