Changing our priority approach
So far, every year the Education for Climate Coalition set focused priorities that shape our activities. Now, we are changing our approach.
Starting this year, we will focus on one overarching policy priority per year that is linked to recent EU policy developments. We will organise our work around five stable focus areas to enable the yearly overarching priority to succeed. Our new approach is a clearer and more policy‑relevant way to communicate and apply our priorities each year.
These topics will be woven into our annual Education for Climate Day event as well as into our upcoming call for innovative green education actions.
2026 overarching policy priority: Intergenerational fairness
To be truly fair to current and future generations, we have a responsibility to address climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation and pollution, which pose existential threats both across borders and beyond the lifetimes of those living today.
Therefore, we have selected intergenerational fairness as our overarching policy priority for 2026. Any delay in action shifts greater environmental costs onto future generations, so we are embedding the principle of intergenerational fairness, to the greatest extent possible, across all our focus areas.
Our priority is directly in line with the EU strategy on intergenerational fairness (March 2026), which aims to ensure that the needs of both current and future generations are fully integrated into policymaking. Education is central to intergenerational fairness because it shapes how people understand, anticipate and respond to long‑term change. The strategy explicitly highlights skills and lifelong learning as essential to helping all generations adapt to economic and technological changes, while fostering shared values across age groups. For Education for Climate community, this means supporting learners and educators to develop the knowledge, agency and responsibility needed to build a fairer and more sustainable future.
5️⃣ focus areas for 2026
🧑🏫Teacher education: Upskilling educators
Although teachers report that it is important to teach about climate change, they often lack adequate training in climate education. Additionally, rigid and overcrowded curricula limit their instructional flexibility.
To better support educators, the Coalition will focus on upskilling teachers by promoting more creative teaching methods – such as using art, storytelling or EdTech – to integrate and enhance sustainability, long‑term thinking and responsibility towards future generations.
The Coalition will work to support peer‑learning networks and share materials like ready‑to‑use toolkits, digital resources, and tools in an open‑source library. Our existing mentoring and job board already lists opportunities for jobs, funding and collaboration with other climate educators.
🌱Green competences: Bridging education with science
Learners need to build strong green competences to contribute meaningfully to the green transition and enhance their future employment prospects in a changing labour market. This year, the Coalition will give special attention to the ‘envisioning futures’ competence area, as it is central to supporting long‑term thinking and enabling learners to consider the impacts of today’s decisions on future generations.
Gamifying climate education can make learning more engaging and effective. We will continue working with the GreenComp Community’s GreenComp Game sessions to help educators make their climate teaching fun and more effective, and with STE(A)M to develop a sustainability learning toolkit for educators to use in STE(A)M classrooms. Also, stay tuned for our community cafés where we bring people of different ages and backgrounds together for interactive sessions.
👇Comment below if you have any other ideas or topics that you would like us to cover in our GreenComp community cafés!
🙋♂️Youth: Leadership and participation
Meaningful and long‑term engagement in climate action is essential for ensuring intergenerational fairness and developing young people’s awareness of climate change. Young people should be empowered to act as leaders and co‑designers of climate solutions because they have a key role in shaping outcomes that affect both present and future generations.
Therefore, the Education for Climate Coalition will continue to create spaces where young people can engage meaningfully with climate action and education. This includes the next edition of the Youth Climate LAB, a peer‑learning activity where young people come together to explore a concrete climate‑related issue, exchange perspectives, and develop ideas that can be applied in their own communities. This new edition will contribute to the implementation of the EU strategy on intergenerational fairness and the EU youth strategy, with a particular focus on youth leadership and citizenship education.
📗Greening schools: Community partnerships
‘Greening schools’ means applying sustainability across the whole school recognising that schools are living environments where sustainability is learned, experienced and practised every day through tangible examples. Such efforts also fosters healthy learning environments that support mental health, healthy lifestyles, and overall well‑being. Within the Education for Climate community, users can already explore examples of whole‑institution approaches and relevant resources on sustainable learning environments. This year, this focus area will highlight how community partnerships foster a culture of sustainability and intergenerational responsibility.
🏙️Citizenship education: Values and resilience
Feedback gathered during Education for Climate Day 2025 highlighted a strong need among community members for climate education that also strengthens active citizenship, participation, and shared values. In the face of the climate crisis, learners need more than knowledge alone. They also need opportunities to develop resilience, emotional intelligence, empathy, and a sense of responsibility towards others and future generations.
In 2026, this focus area will place greater emphasis on citizenship education as a way to support democratic participation, counter mis‑ and disinformation and foster engagement in climate‑related issues.
Moving forward
Our revised 2026 priority approach will help our community continue their journey towards a more sustainable, fair and resilient future.
We will support climate education that fosters dialogue, solidarity, and shared responsibility between generations, so that the interests of both present and future generations are taken into account.
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