Research shows education, especially gender-transformative education, can increase girls’ resilience, adaptive capacity and disaster preparedness to reduce our vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Education can be a strong catalyst in building our agency, leadership skills and fostering active participation in politics and civic society that can generate positive environmental outcomes.

Education also equips girls with the skills needed to secure future green jobs like farmers, conservationists and solar technicians. Through technical and vocational education, girls can learn critical thinking and how to problem solve, which prepares them to help society adapt to climate change.

In my community in Pakistan, I started ‘Girls Leading The Change’  to ensure girls and women aren’t forgotten in the climate movement. We train girls and young women in climate education and human-centred design, empowering them to lead innovative climate solutions through education. Through the initiative, we have worked, learnt and built with girls a model for climate-smart education and curriculum in secondary education. One of the core principles driving my project was ensuring that any curriculum or approach we created not only addressed girls’ concerns but actively integrated their experiences and ideas.