Educational approaches to wellbeing in contexts where children’s everyday lives face the adverse impacts of global changes, including climate change, deserve more in-depth consideration. As it stands, despite the high diversity of contextualized implementations of wellbeing education programs, these are conditioned by the existence of well-functioning school facilities (buildings and grounds). There is no doubt that the school represents a unique setting for the promotion of social and emotional wellbeing (Barry et al, 2017). Nevertheless, we must question any homogenous school-based wellbeing intervention that is not context-sensitive (McLellan et al, 2022). With that in mind, how can we continue to nurture children’ wellbeing when the school is no longer considered a viable or safe space? While scholars, policy makers and practitioners have been debating whether it is the school duty of the school to promote wellbeing (Primdahl et al, 2018), the dependance of prevailing student wellbeing model(s) on strong and stable school infrastructures has so far never been genuinely questioned, not even during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Climate-induced changes tend to impact children from the poorest communities more deeply (Zmirou-Navier, 2021). In its 2022 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that the adverse impacts of climate change “disproportionately affect marginalized groups, amplifying inequalities and undermining sustainable development across all regions.” For example, it is expected that by 2030 almost 125 million children in Africa will be subjected to water scarcity, malnutrition, and displacement because of climate change (Fambasayi & Addaney, 2021). Extreme weather events are themselves traumatic experiences, and losing a school magnifies the negative psychosocial consequences generated by the loss of other resources and sentimental possessions  (Shultz, 2016). The number of affected schools is striking. As example, Kenya has recorded that in 2018 alone, 700 schools were impacted by disastrous climate-changed events and had to close as a consequence (Fambasayi & Addaney, 2021). In 2016, Hurricane Matthew damaged 300 schools and affected a total of 700 in Haiti, while 86 were used as shelters and thus disrupted their educational purpose (Shultz, 2016). 

The intertwining of climate and social justice is clear beyond argument. Since the 1960s, social justice has been at the core of the climate change discourse, bringing into our awareness key themes such as global environmental inequality (Bourg, 2020). The current popularity in the Global North of school-based ecoliteracy programs, which aim at enhancing human-environment relationships, is a major outcome of this trend (McBride et al, 2013). However, the connection between knowledge on the impacts of environmental hazards on populations and knowledge pertaining to children’s wellbeing in the most affected regions has remained, up to now, underdeveloped. This paper draws from a social justice perspective to propose an alternative framework that sustainably supports the wellbeing of children in locations where school buildings are no longer available/accessible, appropriate for learning, or even considered safe spaces due to extreme weather events (e.g., heat waves, wildfires, etc.).

In this paper, we challenge current epistemological and ontological underpinnings of the school as the key setting for the implementation for wellbeing education. More specifically, this contribution breaks with the prevailing school-based wellbeing model(s), by engaging with perspectives from regions that are highly impacted by climate changes such as Latin America and Africa, as a form of resistance to Eurocentric theoretical assumptions, and for educational settings to be better prepared to face the onslaught of environmental changes. Anchored in social justice, our paper presents a set of reflections based on the review of interdisciplinary writings regarding the impact of climate change on education, schooling, and mental health and wellbeing of students and teachers, in countries in Africa and Latin America. It then moves to a critical discussion of prevailing school-based wellbeing approaches before proposing ways to make space for a more accurate representation of current global realities and paths for change.

The impacts of climate change on mental health, on the one hand, and on school infrastructure, on the other, are addressed in separate silos. The nexus of climate change and wellbeing education requires bridging contrasting research foci and practice traditions, in a context of limited interdisciplinary exchange. One way to address the pressing needs of wellbeing education in the face of climate change is to focus on disaster preparedness or adaptation to climate change. We argue that such an approach focuses narrowly on the infrastructure, leaving out of the picture broader/deeper impacts on children's wellbeing and mental health. What we argue for is the need to rethink the school in the context of climate change beyond its physical facilities and put much of our efforts to engage with mental health and wellbeing inequities as an educational objective.

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