Climate change communication and education (CCE) is increasingly becoming important. Within international educational agendas, it is primarily embedded within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Article 6 and Paris Agreement Article 12 as Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE). ACE is divided into six elements: education, training, public awareness, public access to information, public participation, and international cooperation. 

At COP27 in 2022, Parties adopted the Action Plan under the Glasgow work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment. The Action Plan focuses on short-term goals for the next four years regarding ACE, encouraging Parties and other stakeholders to take concrete action. One of the four thematic priorities countries agreed on is monitoring, evaluation, and reporting (MER). Activity D2 of the Action Plan calls for “Enhancing understanding of what constitutes high-quality and effective evaluation of ACE activities, according to national circumstances”. 

The Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project is a six-year Project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada. The Project’s goals are to enhance the quality and quantity of CCE globally. Partners include over 100 leading scholars and agencies, including UNESCO and UNFCCC. 

To cover the different aspects of CCE, the MECCE Project is developing and collecting different kinds of data. Axis 1 collects primarily qualitative data, such as Case Studies and Country Profiles. To date, we funded 12 Case Studies, with another round of 10 Case Studies to be underway by mid-2023. Further, we published 50 Country Profiles jointly with UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, with plans to add 20-30 Country Profiles ahead of COP28 in November 2023. Axis 2 focuses on quantitative data, developing global indicators for the different ACE-Elements. We follow a phased approach, meaning new indicators are being published as they become available. The MECCE Project presented the first nine indicators at COP27 in 2022. All three different kinds of data sources form part of Interactive Data Platform (IDP), a visualization tool to make the data and its findings more accessible to the public. 

This presentation will focus on the intersections between the different elements presented on the MECCE Project’s IDP. Specifically, the presentation will look at the data available for European countries and how they compare. We will compare nine European countries that we have Countries Profiles written for (Sweden, Germany, Malta, Portugal, Italy, Lithuania, France, Czechia, and Albania) and analyze them together with data from Axis 2 data. This analysis shows how different kinds of data can be used to advance MER from a country-driven approach as called-for in the Action Plan. 

This presentation draws on the work done by the MECCE Project’s Country Profiles team and Axis 2. The Country Profiles analyze national-level materials from relevant sectors. Where possible data collected from prior UNESCO studies that have conducted similar document analysis were used as a starting point (UNESCO 2019; UNESCO 2021). Additional materials with a connection to government strategies are collected to get a fuller picture of national-level policy on CCE. We distinguish between self-reported national data(e.g., National Communications, Voluntary National Reviews) and non-self-reported data (e.g. strategic plans, subject curricula). A Data Collection Spreadsheet is used to compile and analyze relevant data on each country’s CCE engagement following the steps below. The spreadsheet includes sections of rows for specific categories of materials and/or rows that provide prompts on how to review those materials to elicit relevant information. A separate spreadsheet is completed for each country. After the first drafting process, Country Profiles are reviewed by the UNESCO GEM Report and country experts who validate the information provided. As per our envisioned lifecycle approach to indicator development, our aim is to develop indicators that meet as many of the defined selection criteria as possible. These include, but are not limited to, providing data on a range of different learning dimensions, having a geographical range of at least 79 countries (40% of the world’s countries), and including a transparent and replicable data collection process. Key targets for our indicator development work are to provide indicators and datasets for benchmarking and target-setting in intergovernmental processes of the UNFCCC (as per Article 6, and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement), as well as supplementing the SDG indicator set (both thematic and global indicators), the latter of which currently includes only input and output sustainability education indicators, non-specific to CCE/ACE. This presentation will combine the findings from the nine indicators currently available on the MECCE’s Project IDP and in addition combine it with findings from the country profiles on nine European Country Profiles. We will analyze, if and how the findings of the different indicators are correlated and how they match with the qualitative data from the country profiles. Where available, we will compare our data with indicators developed by countries through their own ACE-Strategies, Climate Change Plans, Adaptation Plans, or similar.

The findings will help with the MER priority of the Action Plan under the Glasgow work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment, as we provide ways on how to measure the quality and quantity of CCE in selected countries. European countries are to a large extent Annex I, or industrialized, countries under the UNFCCC. This means, they have to follow different rules and provide specific data in their National Communications and other documentations to the UNFCCC. Providing an external, neutral MER mechanism can provide new insights into not only effective MER, but also effective CCE in general. The focus on Europe, due to its population density, large number of countries, and history provides an interesting angle into assessing the MECCE Project’s IDP and showcasing how the data can be used.

UN General Assembly. (1994). United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: resolution/adopted by the General Assembly, 20 January 1994. UNESCO. (2019). Educational content up close: examining the learning dimensions of Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Education. UNESCO. (2021). Learn for our planet. a global review of how environmental issues are integrated in education. . UNFCCC. (2021). Glasgow Work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment. Glasgow UNFCCC. (2022). Action Plan under the Glasgow Work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment. Sharm El-Sheik