Climate change poses a major threat to the future of today’s youth. Globally, young people are at the forefront of climate change activism. Their ability to engage, however, depends on the level of knowledge of climate change and concern about the topic. We sought to examine levels of knowledge and concerns about climate change among youth in South Africa, and their experiences of heat exposure. Ten questions on climate change knowledge, concerns and experiences were nested within a cross-sectional survey conducted in a cluster randomised trial among 924 secondary school learners in 14 public schools in low-income Western Cape areas. Learners’ mean age was 15.8 years and they were predominately female. While 72.0% of respondents knew that climate change leads to higher temperatures, only 59.7% agreed that human activity is responsible for climate change, and 58.0% believed that climate change affects human health. Two thirds (68.7%) said that climate change is a serious issue and 65.9% indicated action is needed for prevention. Few learners indicated climate change events had affected them, although many reported difficulties concentrating during hot weather (72.9%). Female learners had lower knowledge levels than male learners, but more frequent heat-related symptoms. Learners scoring high on knowledge questions expressed the most concern about climate change and had the highest heat impacts. Many youth seem unaware that climate change threatens their future. Heat-related symptoms are common, likely undermining educational performance, especially as temperatures escalate. More is needed to mainstream climate change into South African school curricula.
Raising awareness of climate change and of the importance of protecting the environment are likely to be critical for mounting an effective response to climate change and for full engagement with mitigation and adaptation initiatives. Several studies in Africa suggest that familiarity with the term ‘climate change’ and general knowledge about climate change among adults and children are concerning, with negative implications for action (Lee et al.
Climate change represents a classic multidimensional global problem characterised by diverse actors, multiple stressors and complex time scales (Mudombi et al.
Solving the above complexities begins by building a solid foundation of knowledge around climate change among school learners. Building this knowledge is also a target of the Sustainable Development Goals, specifically target 13.3 – ‘improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning’.
It is important to track progress towards these targets through, for example, evaluating levels of knowledge about climate change among youth, assessing whether youth are concerned about climate change and are experiencing impacts of climate extremes. Taken together, this information will help inform the planning of educational initiatives and health sector programmes to assist people to cope and adapt to a changing climate. We thus sought to measure levels of knowledge and concern about climate change through a quantitative survey among youth in South Africa, as well as what experiences they have had with climate change and extreme heat.
A cross-sectional survey, part of an endline evaluation of a trial, was conducted from July to October 2019 among female and male Grade 10 learners from 14 secondary schools in Khayelitsha, a peri-urban township about an hour’s drive from the Cape Town city centre. The schools are a sub-set of those enrolled in a cluster randomised controlled trial called the Girls Achieve Power Trial (GAP Year Trial) that began in April 2017 (Kutywayo et al.
All GAP Year participants, now in Grade 10 (2 years after the beginning of the trial) at the 14 selected schools in Khayelitsha were eligible to participate in this survey, irrespective of sex, age or race. Only those who had completed the baseline survey, were present on the day of data collection, and had parental consent and provided individual assent were recruited. Results for Soweto and Tembisa sites were not yet available at the time of writing; therefore, we only present the results for Khayelitsha learners.
The survey was administered by a fieldworker who captured the responses directly onto a hand-held tablet. Questions were asked about participant socio-demographics, social support, gender norms, sexuality, perceptions of school safety and care seeking, as well as the climate change indicators. The survey was developed in English and later translated into IsiXhosa, the dominant South African language at the study sites. In this article we only report data on the population characteristics and responses to the climate change questions.
A quantitative approach was adopted: questions on climate change were presented as a series of nine statements to which respondents had to reply Agree, Neutral or Disagree. The statements covered three domains, namely, knowledge (four measures), concerns around climate change (two measures), and experiences of climate change and heat exposure (three measures). The indicators used to evaluate knowledge assessed whether the youth knew the causes of climate changes, and its manifestations in the natural world and in humans. Questions on concerns about climate change were formulated to evaluate the learner’s perceptions of the seriousness of phenomenon, and of the need for taking action. Finally, students were asked to report on whether climate change or extreme weather events influence their behaviour, and on how heat exposure affects their aggression levels and ability to concentrate in school.
Survey data were collected and managed using REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) electronic data capture tools hosted at Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI) (Harris et al.
We used descriptive analyses to examine the overall frequency of responses and identify differences in the answers by socio-demographic characteristics. We dichotomised the responses into agree versus neutral or disagree. A chi-square test was used to compare responses between different population sub-groups. We also assessed whether learners who correctly answered all four knowledge questions had higher levels of concern or had experienced climate-related phenomenon than the other learners. Furthermore, each correct knowledge answer was assigned a score of one point and a score of zero for neutral or disagree. The learners’ scores were compared between population sub-groups using the Student’s
The University of the Witwatersrand Human Research Ethics Community granted ethics approval (reference number: M160940) and the Western Cape Department of Education and Gauteng Department of Education granted approval for the research activities.
A total of 924 learners participated in the survey. The mean number of participants per school was 66, ranging from 36 to 104. The mean age of the learners was 15.8 years (standard deviation = 0.9 years), with 21.8% of learners aged 17 years and older (201/922). Most learners were female (67.7%; 626/924) and IsiXhosa speaking (89.7%; 828/923).
Of the 924 learners, only 39.6% lived with both parents (366), 42.6% lived with one of their parents (394) and 17.7% stayed with someone other than a parent (164). About a quarter reported that their parents or guardian were unemployed (244/924; 26.4%).
Although 72.0% of respondents stated that climate change leads to higher temperatures, only 59.7% agreed that human activity is a cause of climate change (
Knowledge, concerns and experiences of climate change among secondary school learners in the Western Cape, South Africa.
Indicator | All learners % agree | Females % agree | Males % agree | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Climate change causes temperatures to rise | 72.0 | 666 | 70.9 | 444 | 74.5 | 222 |
Human activity is a cause of climate change | 59.7 | 552 | 57.6 |
361 | 64.1 |
191 |
Climate change affects people, plants and animals | 80.7 | 743 | 79.8 | 499 | 82.7 | 244 |
Climate change affects my health | 58.0 | 536 | 57.8 | 362 | 58.5 | 174 |
Climate change is a serious issue | 68.7 | 635 | 68.0 | 426 | 70.1 | 209 |
Action should be taken to prevent climate change | 65.9 | 609 | 64.2 | 402 | 69.4 | 207 |
Climate change events (e.g. heat and drought) influence my behaviour | 38.5 | 356 | 38.9 | 244 | 37.5 | 112 |
It is hard to concentrate in school when it is too hot | 72.9 | 674 | 76.6 |
480 | 65.1 | 194 |
When it is hot, I am more likely to scream, push or punch others | 13.9 | 128 | 14.2 | 89 | 13.1 | 39 |
Note:
,
,
Only slightly more than two thirds said that climate change is a serious issue (68.7%), and a similar figure held the view that action is needed to prevent climate change (65.9%). Of those who believed that climate change was a serious issue, 82.2% felt that action should be taken (522/609). Overall, 21.9% felt that climate change was not a serious issue, and that action was not needed (202/924).
Less than half the learners reported that climate change events such as heat exposure or droughts had influenced or impacted on their behaviour (38.5%). However, almost three quarters of respondents said that they had difficulties concentrating during periods of high temperatures (72.9%). There was considerable variation across schools in this measure, with the proportion of participants reporting concentration difficulties ranging from 60.0% in one of the schools (30/50) to a high of 90.5% in another (38/42). A minority of learners reported links between heat exposure, and aggression or physical violence (13.9%), although levels reached 18–19% in three schools.
Links between knowledge, concerns and climate-related experiences were detected at school and individual level. Learners at the school with the lowest knowledge scores also were least concerned about climate change and the converse was true in the school with the highest knowledge levels. Participants who correctly answered all the knowledge questions were more concerned about climate change and also had the highest reported climate-related experiences (
Comparison of knowledge levels and climate-related experiences between pupils with high and low levels of knowledge about climate change.
Few associations were detected between the study outcomes and socio-demographic factors, such as age, being born in the province and parent employment status. There were two statistically significant sex differences. Female learners performed worse than male learners on knowledge indicators, with female learners having a mean 0.20 lower knowledge score than male learners (
We did not detect any associations between age and levels of knowledge or concern about climate change. Participants below 16 years, however, reported the larger impacts of high temperatures on concentration (76.5%, 295/673) than older participants (70.4%, 378/537;
Our study found major gaps in knowledge about the causes and manifestations of climate change among Grade 10 learners in low-income communities in the Western Cape. Changes in climate were commonly not ascribed to human activity, nor necessarily viewed as requiring major shifts in societal or individual actions. The quantitative survey findings indicate that a considerable portion of learners appeared to be unconcerned about climate change, with only two thirds regarding it as a serious issue. One fifth believed both that climate change was not a serious issue and that no preventative action was needed. Encouragingly however, those who demonstrated high knowledge of climate change saw the urgency of climate change action. Strong links between knowledge and levels of concern and desire for action, which we found at both individual and school level, suggests that school learning or public information campaigns that raise knowledge may result in attitudinal shifts, or that having personal experiences of climate change may generate an increased interest in the topic (Toan do et al.
Several studies in Africa indicate that a large portion of the population had observed changes in temperature and rainfall patterns over the past decades (Ajuang et al.
Many learners, in particular female and younger learners, drew clear links between difficulties in concentrating and heat exposure, and some noted heat-aggression associations. Making connections between rising global temperatures and symptoms of heat stress could potentially assist learners to comprehend the importance and urgency of addressing climate change. In many schools in South Africa, classrooms are made from converted shipping containers or prefabricated sheeting with corrugated iron roofs (Bidassey-Manilal et al.
Youth have major stressors in South Africa, including violence and mental health conditions, which may be worsened by climate change (Cheng et al.
Clearly more is needed within secondary schools to address gaps in awareness around climate change. The school curriculum in South Africa currently includes only very basic information about the topic, and makes no mention of the human health impacts of this phenomenon (Department of Basic Education Republic of South Africa
Heightened knowledge about climate change may stimulate activism among South African youth, much like the activism that has had powerful impacts in many other parts of the world. Increased awareness and community engagement could help shape decision-making at local and national level and may increase the uptake of adaptation and mitigation strategies within communities. Where policymakers perceive low awareness or understanding of climate change among local communities, they may be more likely to overlook or even actively exclude communities in the co-design and then co-delivery of adaptation projects (Mudombi et al.
However, generating awareness about climate change, raising levels of concern, and developing a common understanding of the problem is not straightforward. The complex terminology used in describing climate change may not be accessible to many school learners. This is a challenging topic for learners as a range of complex climate change narratives are being presented by multiple actors, including the fossil fuel industry (Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly
The strengths of the study include a large sample from several schools, set within a project that has much experience in securing high-quality data from study participants and strong relations with the learners and teachers built up over several years. The experiences of learners in the Western Cape, however, may not reflect those of learners elsewhere given the recent drought experiences and relatively better functioning of schools in the province. Knowledge levels may also be higher in quintile 4 and 5 schools who were excluded from the study. Other limitations include the fact that the validity of the measures used in this study is uncertain. Measures of knowledge and experiences about climate change have not been validated, and thus the content and construct validity of our measures are not known. Researchers and international agencies need to select a standardised, validated set of indicators of knowledge and perceptions which can be applied in future. Lastly, although close links between knowledge and concerns suggest that advancing knowledge may have ripple effects, that conclusion may be over-simplistic as for many people there is a disconnect between knowledge, attitudes, and actions.
Clearly much more needs to be done to educate learners in South Africa about climate change and its consequences, including through urgent reform of school curriculum. South Africa is not on track to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals on climate change education as well as education commitments made in the Lima Declaration on Education and Awareness on Climate Change, and Paris Agreement (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
We would like to acknowledge the participants for their valued contribution to this research as well as the Department of Education stakeholders, data collectors and study partners across sites. Clarence Yah was the Senior Researcher, leading the research. Kiran Kalpee managed this dataset, with support from Khuthala Mabetha. Indigo MO and Wits RHI fieldworkers supported with data collection. Tarryn Cooper-Bell from Equal Education Law Centre, South Africa provided useful information on the climate change curriculum in South Africa.
A.K., M.F.C., N.N., F.S. and S.M. hold investments in the fossil fuel industry through their pension funds. The University of the Witwatersrand holds investments in the fossil fuel industry through their endowments and other financial reserves.
A.K. was responsible for the collection of data at site and project administration. M.F.C. led the write up of this manuscript as well as formal analysis and data curation. A.K., N.N. and S.M. were responsible for project design, methodology, conceptualisation of the tools and the review and editing of manuscript drafts. F.S. helped write the first draft of the article. L.B. contributed to the review and editing of the final draft. All authors approved for the final manuscript to be published.
This work was supported, in whole by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [INV-007156]. Under the grant conditions of the Foundation, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License has already been assigned to the Author Accepted Manuscript version that might arise from this submission. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The data that supports the findings of this study are openly available in GAP Year Khayelitsha Endline Climate Change Data at:
Kutywayo, A. (2021). GAP Year Khayelitsha Endline Climate Change Data. Retrieved from:
The views and opinions expressed in the submitted article are those of the authors listed, and not an official position of the institution or funder.