Environment and Climate Change Summit for Teachers
01 February 2014, Tacloban City

“Today, we are faced globally with a new crisis: the changing environment and the changing climate. It’s a frightening situation that will affect everyone but will hurt the poor and the weak far more than the wealthy and the strong. …we cannot pretend that it will not affect us. It already has.” -Wilfred J. Wilkinson, President, Rotary International, Rotarian Magazine, April 2008

Rotary and Climate Change

Climate stewardship is a natural responsibility for Rotarians. It meets our Four-Way Test for responsible service, and has direct implications for our ongoing humanitarian commitments to disaster relief, peace and security and, especially, clean water for poor communities worldwide.

Our leadership in business and community, our connections with Rotarians worldwide, and our tradition of service above self give Rotarians a unique power to help our society minimize and adapt to climate change.

Climate Change and the Four-Way Test

Rotarians have learned to apply the tests of Truth, Fairness, Goodwill and Benefit for All to any project we undertake. Climate action meets each of these four tests:
• Is it the truth?

The world’s leading scientists, including the national science academies of the United States and 18 other countries, have testified to the reality and urgency of human-caused climate change. The scientific consensus is nearly unanimous and supported by many independent lines of evidence.
• Is it fair?

Climate change is profoundly an issue of fairness. It is caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels in the wealthiest countries, especially the United States, and in the rapidly growing economies of China and other middle-income countries. Yet, it will hurt most the poorest of the poor, who lack the resources to adjust and who live in the areas most affected by the increased drought, flooding, and water-borne disease that come with a warmer climate. Even in America, Hurricane Katrina showed us how natural disasters can fall most heavily on the poor. We cannot attribute any one storm to climate change, any more than we can attribute any one person’s heart attack to our national epidemic of obesity. Nevertheless, warmer oceans are expected to increase the intensity of tropical storms. Katrina is, therefore, an example of the kind of disaster that is likely to become more common with global warming. It is an image of how the world’s poor will pay for the lifestyles of the wealthy.
• Does it promote goodwill?

Fair solutions to climate change are essential to international goodwill. Climate change, and how to share the responsibility for minimizing it, are already the subjects of rancorous disputes among Europe, the United States, China and developing nations.

Climate change may already have exacerbated the drought and famine that fuel the violence in Darfur. Two other climate-change effects, sea level rise and increased seasonal flooding, have driven refugees from Bangladesh into Northeast India, sparking an often-violent conflict with the Assamese already living there.

Further warming is likely to bring wars over water, instability due to hunger and disease, and social conflict due to the movement of millions of climate refugees. Such problems are likely in many regions that already have ongoing conflicts, including North Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, the Caribbean and the Amazon. Climate change is a threat to our own national security, according to a recent report by eleven retired admirals and generals including former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan and former Commander of the U.S. Central Command Anthony Zinni. As the United Nations Environment Program puts it, “Combating climate change will be a central peace policy of the 21st century.”
• Is it beneficial for all concerned?

Climate change affects all of us. By working together to curb greenhouse gas emissions, we can build a strong, sustainable economy. We can preserve our water and food supplies, our public health, the political stability of our world, and the richness of nature. Our actions in the next twenty to fifty years will determine whether our children live in a rich world or a permanently impoverished one.
Environment Forum for Teachers

On 16 December 2013, Rotary International 3800 conducted the first Environment Forum for Teachers where Climate Change Commission Naderev Sano graced the event. Representatives from the Department of Energy, Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities and The Climate Reality Project were also part of the whole event. It was well appreciated by the attendees and pledged to share what they have learned with their students and communities. Target participants are 500 public and private school teachers, principals and supervisors.
Rotary International Causes

Rotary members unite at home and across the globe to put our experience and knowledge to work tackling our most pressing challenges. Two of the areas we focus our efforts are:

a. Improving basic education and services
b. Helping communities develop

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Objectives:

a. Raise awareness and empower teachers on their role as stewards of our environment.
b. Simplify climate science, solutions big and small to the climate crisis.
c. Update the teachers on the government’s effort to address the global climate crisis.
d. Promote closer collaboration and partnerships between schools and their respective leaders and teachers

We see the importance empowering our teachers as stewards not only of their students but also of the environment as a whole. More than 95% of schools in Tacloban City was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan and it planted so much trauma and disappointment to the whole educational local educational system. Two months after the typhoon onslaught, not all students attended the first day of school. According to school officials, some were missing and some perished.

It could not be denied that the storm was an extreme weather condition which destroyed communities in Eastern Visayas. How would we able to let the teachers understand the whole reason of this catastrophic phenomenon? How would we able to equip our teachers with the basic science and knowledge to strengthen themselves and their students?

With Rotary’s commitment to education and sustainable development, we shall help our educators to become stewards of the present and future generations to come – now, as Climate Stewards for the environment. We will not call them typhoon survivors, but Climate Warriors – ever ready to face the global challenge with solutions big and small.

Another significant part of the summit is the psychosocial intervention wherein group workshops will be conducted on their experiences during the typhoon. Additionally, entertainments from volunteer artists will give a sigh of relief as they prepare for their new stage of educational rehabilitation.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202945081930745&set=a.1151065499528.2022133.1314332199&type=1&theater