In the summer of 2024, record-breaking heatwaves in northern India forced schools across several states to close for weeks. While policymakers viewed these closures as temporary disruptions, for children, they were lessons learned from direct experience. Heat, water scarcity, and air pollution became daily realities rather than abstract concepts, highlighting a gap between lived experience and formal education. India’s climate-vulnerable youth are increasingly exposed to environmental changes, yet the education system has struggled to equip them with the tools to understand, interpret, and respond to these challenges. Environmental education remains largely theoretical, focusing on definitions and diagrams, while climate impacts unfold outside classroom walls.
Treating children solely as recipients of climate knowledge overlooks their potential as active observers and communicators. Children notice, interpret, and describe environmental changes in ways that are vivid and relatable. When education systems encourage this expression, children become climate storytellers, translating local experiences into narratives that resonate within families, schools, and communities. In India, over a billion children face at least one major climate hazard—heatwaves, floods, cyclones, or air pollution—yet climate education often remains disconnected from these realities. Without grounding learning in lived experience, education risks losing relevance and credibility.
Storytelling is a critical pedagogical tool in environmental education. It allows children to connect data with experience, understand cause and effect, and situate local observations within global phenomena. Participatory, narrative-based approaches have been shown to strengthen comprehension, retention, and civic engagement. When children document local climate impacts—drying water sources, shifting monsoon patterns—they develop observational, analytical, and communication skills. UNESCO’s 2023 review highlights that student-led, experiential learning enhances environmental literacy and helps children imagine practical responses to climate change.
India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasizes environmental awareness and experiential learning, but implementation remains limited. Environmental education is often treated as an optional component, with teachers lacking training or flexibility to engage beyond prescribed content. In under-resourced schools, infrastructure and time constraints further restrict hands-on learning. Climate education can challenge established narratives about development and inequality, which contributes to institutional hesitancy. As a result, children frequently learn facts without context or the opportunity to articulate their own experiences.
Inequities in climate education mirror broader educational divides. Children in urban, private schools often have access to project-based learning and environmental clubs, while students in rural, tribal, and low-income areas experience climate impacts firsthand but have fewer opportunities to express their observations. Prioritizing voice alongside knowledge is essential to building an inclusive and democratic approach to climate education. Storytelling enables children from all backgrounds to participate meaningfully, regardless of school resources, fostering attention, agency, and engagement.
Children’s narratives do more than communicate knowledge—they influence social behavior. When children describe local environmental changes through writing, art, or digital media, they often affect household and community decisions around water, waste, and energy. In this way, children act as both learners and agents of social change. Civil society organizations, such as Smile Foundation through its Mission Education initiative, have demonstrated the potential of observation-based and narrative-driven environmental education. By embedding storytelling in climate learning, children are positioned as communicators capable of documenting and sharing their experiences without bearing undue responsibility for solving global problems.
Storytelling also helps mitigate climate anxiety. When children engage with local environmental phenomena through observation and expression, they develop agency and resilience rather than helplessness. Climate literacy, cultivated through narrative, emphasizes understanding systems, recognizing interdependence, and articulating concerns. In India, where climate change is experienced as instability, education that foregrounds children’s experiences fosters emotional and intellectual engagement, preparing them to navigate a changing environment.
As climate disruptions intensify, schools will increasingly face closures and instability. Environmental education that treats children as storytellers offers a practical and democratic solution, anchoring learning in lived reality rather than abstract theory. Recognizing children’s observations as essential to education cultivates responsibility, voice, and civic awareness. In climate-vulnerable countries like India, these skills are vital. By listening to and supporting children as climate storytellers, education systems can both enhance climate literacy and better understand the stakes of environmental change.
