IB DP Biology has taken climate change very seriously – with a focus on empowering students.

Using these criteria and planning backward by design to even 3 year olds can serve a powerful forum of student voice and actions.

Student agency and self-efficacy will lead to actions.

How we can help in schools

The questions in IB DP syllabus have highlighted this key area.

• What are the impacts of climate change at each level of biological organisation?
• What processes determine the distribution of organisms on Earth?

What we need to do is educate even our youngest children on what is happening to the world – and empowering them to take action.

These questions are not just for IBDP students!

The curriculum needs to ensure that the young people in our charge think critically about their impact in and on the world and to prepare students with the skills required to understand that this is complex – but they can do something about it because students can develop resilience and the positivity that is needed to tackle the climate crisis. This is surely what we mean about a high quality teaching and learning environment? Like every teacher is a teacher of literacy, can we make every teacher an environment teacher – just like we want global or international relevance?

Schools can make a difference

As a starter lets make it our responsibility and start asking the right questions and lead the curriculum from age 3!

Below – you may find this heavy – but it need not be!

Some key starter questions…

Why do we get carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere and what is the impact?

What do know about the release of carbon dioxide from deep oceans?

Do we know that there are increases in absorption of solar radiation due to loss of reflections from snow and ice,?

We teach students about seasons, about the heart, chemical equations….so why not the above?

How many of us know that accelerating rates of decomposition of peat and previously undecomposed organic matter in permafrost, release of methane from melting permafrost and increases in droughts and forest fires?

Did you know this?

Are we aware that warmer temperatures and decreased winter snowfall are leading to increased incidence of drought and reductions in primary production in taiga, with forest browning?

Do we even know what a Taiga Forest is? Many of our children do…

Taiga Forest for children

The warmer temperatures increase the frequency and intensity of forest fires, which results in carbon combustion. Do you recognise this?

Forest fires – worst ever!

Thus this leads to potential loss of breeding grounds – for example the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) due to early breakout of landfast ice in the Antarctic and loss of sea ice habitat for walruses in the Arctic.

90% of Emporer Penguins will be extinct by the end of the century

We teach our children to love Penguins – such wonderful animals – we take them to the zoo, to see them.

Climate change

Warmer surface water can prevent nutrients coming up to the surface, decreasing ocean primary production and energy flow through marine food chains. So guys, what is Primary Production? Do we depend on it?

CLIMATE CHANGE and other human impacts may have made Humboldt’s Tableau unrecognizable

The Montane Bird – species – its a bird that is telling us stories

As evidence-based examples, include for tropical-zone montane bird species in New Guinea and range contraction and northward spread in North American tree species.

Effects of Climate Change on Montane Birds of the Northeast

Jump ahead thirty years—will you still find the sights and sounds of your favourite birds in national parks? By 2050, one in four birds in Parks Canada places may need to find new homes as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions.

How about Corals? Why are they important?

Increased carbon dioxide concentrations are the cause of ocean acidification and suppression of calcification in corals.

When CO2 is absorbed by seawater, a series of chemical reactions occur resulting in the increased concentration of hydrogen ions. This increase causes the seawater to become more acidic and causes carbonate ions to be relatively less abundant. Carbonate ions are an important building block of structures such as sea shells and coral skeletons. Decreases in carbonate ions can make building and maintaining shells and other calcium carbonate structures difficult for calcifying organisms such as oysters, clams, sea urchins, shallow water corals, deep sea corals, and calcareous plankton. These changes in ocean chemistry can affect the behavior of non-calcifying organisms as well. Certain fish’s ability to detect predators is decreased in more acidic waters. When these organisms are at risk, the entire food web may also be at risk. Ocean acidification is affecting the entire world’s oceans, including coastal estuaries and waterways. Many economies are dependent on fish and shellfish and people worldwide rely on food from the ocean as their primary source of protein.

Ocean acidification refers to a reduction in the pH of the ocean over an extended period of time, caused primarily by uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.

How does ocean acidification affect coral reefs?

Increases in water temperature are a cause of coral bleaching. When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.

The dangers of coral bleaching

Loss of corals causes the collapse of reef ecosystems.

Of local threats to coral reefs, overfishing and damaging fishing techniques such as deep water trawling and the use of explosives and cyanide, are the most destructive. When herbivorous fish that eat seaweed are overfished, uncontrolled seaweed growth can smother coral.

So a great deal of damage happening to corals….

How about Trees? Is planting the solution?

Do plantations of non-native tree species or re-wilding with native species offer the best approach to carbon sequestration?

Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation. It’s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes. Through rewilding, wildlife’s natural rhythms create wilder, more biodiverse habitats.

Globally, tree-planting projects are becoming all the rage, but many are counting on old habits of planting monoculture plantations and calling them forests.

So why is rewilding so controversial?

The main reason that many people are strongly opposed to the idea of rewilding is because of its potential to hurt local enterprises, which rely on fisheries, livestock, crop farming and hunting land – for example a sheep farmer can’t graze sheep and an arable farmer can’t grow crops in an area that is being rewilded. Projects reinstating natural habitats in areas need to be met with agreement on both sides.

And Peat – is this important?

Peat formation naturally occurs in waterlogged soils in temperate and boreal zones and also very rapidly in some tropical ecosystems.

Is finding and protecting peatlands enough in a warming world.

Photoperiod and temperature patterns are examples of variables that influence the timing of biological events such as flowering, budburst and bud set in deciduous trees, bird migration and nesting.

An ecosystem temperature may act as the cue in one population and photoperiod may be the cue in another.

For example- the Arctic mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium arcticum). What signal does this provide.

Is the growth of Arctic mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium arcticum) a signal?

How about movement of herds – caribou for example

The movement of 1,000 caribou from seven herds between 1995 and 2017 is correlated with factors such as local weather, the timing of melting snow, vegetation availability, and global climate patterns.

And caterpillars destroying forests?

Caterpillars – measuring 2-3cm (about one inch) can wreak havoc in oak trees, as they feast on the young leaves … climate change

Beetles?

Why are beetles destroying forests?

The changing colour of owls?

Why is the tawny owl (Strix aluco) changing colour?

Climate change – less snow has an impact on the Tawny Owl

And how about the migration on tits?

Because the weather is milder overall due to climate change, a greater number of tits are surviving the European winter – which, of course, means more competition for nesting spaces come spring. And if a spring is then colder than the new normal, the tits build their nests later. So you get a greater number of great tits with overlapping nesting needs – which causes huge clashes with the flycatchers.

How can we continue to teach ecology and perfect ecosystems when all this is happening?

We need to start teaching from where we are – even if it does mean rewriting curricula and changing exams… what is more valid? What is more important?

We all need to take the first step….