CLIMATE change education in Pacific schools is no longer optional; it’s a matter of survival.
Fiji Education Specialist Temesia Tuicaumia says climate change is part of everyday life for Fijian children.
“Students see flooding, stronger cyclones, coastal erosion, and changes to fishing and farming,” he said.
For Pacific students, climate change isn’t future tense. It is the present and it is personal. In the Pacific, climate education is not just science. It is survival knowledge.
According to Tuicaumia, while climate change is present in parts of educational learning, it is not yet fully embedded.
“Even though these impacts are real, climate change is not fully built into our school curriculum,” he said.
“It is usually taught in small parts, inside subjects like geography or science, instead of being a focus across all year levels.”
This inconsistency is reflected elsewhere in the region.
In Samoa, literacy champion Enid Westerlund says climate change isn’t taught consistently through school and it’s not part of the curriculum from early years.
“The implementation of sustainable practices is undoubtedly a big challenge, but it is encouraging to see initiatives in place, whether in waste management, school gardening, or many other areas.”
Across the Pacific, these initiatives show promise, but they also highlight a core challenge: good ideas cannot replace a strong system. Climate education cannot depend on whether a school or teacher has the extra time, funding, or personal passion to push it forward.
Tuicaumia shares that adding climate change and sustainable solutions to Fiji’s education system is not easy.
A recent study called “Embedding climate change education into school curriculum” found that some challenges of integrating climate change education into the curriculum are lack of teacher knowledge and understanding, the influence of mass media, and the lack of teaching and learning resources.
It’s a mammoth task.
“Changing a national curriculum takes a long time; it needs planning, approval, teacher training, new learning materials, and changes to exams,” Tuicaumia said.
“Even when climate topics are added on paper, teachers may not always have the time, training, or resources to teach them well.”
The challenge of embedding climate change topics into the education system is not only technical.
Competing priorities mean schools must focus on basic learning like reading, writing, mathematics, and preparing students to find employment and stand on their own two feet after completing school.
After COVID-19 and recent disasters, these needs are even more urgent. Because of this, climate education often becomes a “nice to have” instead of a priority.
Still, Tuicaumia believes there is a realistic way forward for Fiji to slowly include climate topics across different subjects, rather than creating new courses all at once.
“Teaching should be practical and connected to local communities, using Indigenous and traditional knowledge that Pacific people already have about caring for the land and ocean,” he said.
One of the most important shifts in recent years is that climate change education in the Pacific is no longer treated as a one-off awareness activity.
It is increasingly being built into formal education systems, with regional organisations such as the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) supporting member states to strengthen climate education through curriculum, teacher training, and learning resources.
This includes “Learning about Climate Change the Pacific Way,” a suite of country-specific teacher resources designed to connect science to local realities.
The emphasis is simple but powerful: children learn best when climate education is locally rooted in Pacific environments, communities, culture, and daily life.
Instead of teaching climate change as a global problem happening elsewhere, students learn it as something happening at home to which they can respond.
In Fiji, climate education has been elevated beyond policy ambition and is backed by legislation.
Fiji’s Climate Change Act 2021 reinforces the importance of embedding climate change across national systems, including education.
Fijian education specialists and teachers increasingly stress the same point – children experience climate impacts and need the vocabulary, knowledge, and confidence to understand them.
When students can name what is happening—coastal erosion, salinization, coral bleaching, and stronger cyclones—it becomes less frightening and more manageable. It becomes something that can be planned for, adapted to, and acted on. In Tonga and Vanuatu, where disasters have reshaped national development pathways, climate change education is often combined with disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience learning.
Education ministries are increasingly looking at teaching children how to respond to emergencies, stay safe during disasters, and how to understand the link between climate and extreme events.
In Samoa, a climate change teaching resource has been developed specifically for certain year levels, focusing on integrating climate learning into science and social studies.
Climate change education in Solomon Islands is increasingly being linked to broader realities, including human mobility.
Meanwhile, in low-lying atoll countries like Kiribati, climate change education is inseparable from national survival. When a country’s entire future is threatened by sea-level rise, education cannot be neutral. It must prepare young people to adapt and advocate.
Across these nations, one message is consistent: teachers are central, but they need support.
Without teacher training, lesson plans, classroom materials, and protected time in the school calendar, climate change education becomes another burden placed upon already stretched schools.
Climate change education is still too often treated as a topic in one subject, a one-week awareness campaign, or a unit taught once a year.
But in reality, climate change touches everything – economics and livelihoods, health, food security, migration, housing, water, sanitation, mental health, identity, and culture.
If climate education is only taught as science, the Pacific will miss the opportunity to equip children with the full set of skills they need to survive and lead.