Kyrgyzstani schoolchildren to get vast knowledge of climate change
All schools of Kyrgyzstan will get 3 000 learning toolkits “Climate Box. A schoolbook for Kyrgyzstanis schoolchildren on topic “Climate Change”.
The Minister of Education and Science Ms. Gulmira Kudaiberdieva highlighted importance of this toolkit at a time when the Ministry works on content and standards of education, and curriculums. “Definitely, such project on climate change has high importance especially that this toolkit is adopted to Central Asian climate. It provides our children with knowledge on our climate and its use in teachers’ work is very important,” says the Minister of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic.
“Climate Box” narrates interestingly about climate change and its possible aftereffects in form of amusing stories, photos, charts and maps. Gulmira Kudaiberdieva says its format is of exceptional interest for schools of Kyrgyzstan.
Erkinbek Kasybekov, Assistant Resident Representative at UNDP Kyrgyz Republic, says the climate change is the one of most important international issues. Climate changes will seriously affect developing countries that are more vulnerable due to dependence upon natural resources and its limited capacities. This UN Sustainable Goals placed the importance on this problem; this is the 13th goal, devoted to climate change. “Timely adaptation to climate change will allow not only cutting these losses but bringing substantial economic benefit to Kyrgyzstan; it will minimize threats to ecosystems, lives and health of human beings, economic advancement and infrastructure facilities. Accordingly, education is the very basis for more efficient implementation of climate change adaptation,” said Erkinbek Kasybekov.
The version of the toolkit “Climate Box” adapted to the Kyrgyz Republic was developed by the UNDP Project and the Global Environment Fund (GEF) “Strengthening of Institutional and Legal Capacities to Enable Improvement of the National Monitoring System and Management of Environmental Information” and the Ecological Movement “BIOM” within the frames of the regional project “Climate Box: Education and Awareness on Climate Change” supported by the “New World” Project, financed by the Coca-Cola Company and implemented by UNDP.
A big team of authors was working on the “Climate Box”. Among them were the experts of different areas: climate researches, geographers, biologists, economists, and professional children’s storywriters. Experienced teachers and resource specialists of the Kyrgyz Republic made an invaluable contribution to the project by helping to develop recommendations for teachers on the use of the toolkit during the classes at school. Vladimir Berdin, Ekaterina Gracheva, Yulia Dobrolubova, Dmitry Zamolodchikov, Pavel Konstatinov, Natalia Ryzhkova and Elena Smirnova worked on the “Climate Box”. The Kyrgyz version was recast and increased by 30 percent.
Brief info: The UN Development Program (UNDP) and its partners originally published the “Climate Box” in 2014 that was designed for the Russian schools. The kit of materials received multiple positive feedbacks including from teachers and experts from other countries. Therefore, it was decided to issue an international version of the “Climate Box” in English. A new project on adaptation of the kit for three pilot countries in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was launched in 2016.
Additional information is available at Vladimir Grebnev, the Coordinator of UNDP “Environment Protection for Sustainable Development” Programme in Kyrgyzstan, tel. + 996-312 304140 (ext. 172), mobile +996-777 909110, e-mail vladimir.grebnev@undp.org