India’s higher education apex body, the University Grants Commission (UGC), has mandated all students at the country’s universities to study subjects such as environmental education and climate change in order to graduate, starting from the about-to-begin 2023 to 2024 academic year.
The new course will include the national obligation to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The UGC recently directed universities and colleges to introduce a compulsory core subject on environmental studies for all undergraduate programmes, including general engineering, medical, architecture, pharmacy, management, among others, according to the UGC guidelines issued on the direction of the Ministry of Education.
According to the UGC, the new environment education curriculum will be multidisciplinary and encompass areas such as climate change, sustainable development, conservation and management of biological resources and biodiversity, pollution, sanitation, waste management, and forest and wildlife protection.
Environment education was offered as an elective or optional course, but now it will be included as a main subject where students will focus more on practical knowledge and aspects rather than theory.
Institutions will have the flexibility to choose how to teach the subject, according to the UGC.
However, it also said that course design should be based on community engagement and service, practical understanding of threats to the environment and ‘value-based’ education to learn about environmental protection and sustainable development.
According to the UGC the proposed credits for the course can be acquired over six to eight semesters.
UGC chairman, Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar said recently that a high-level committee had prepared a blueprint for environmental education in line with the recommendations of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which stresses environmental education and making students more aware via field work and community engagement.
Meanwhile, some of the academics noted that the compulsory course represented a major step forward in incorporating environmental education into the mainstream education system.
They have noted that as India has witnessed extreme weather events in the past few years, including huge loss to life and property, extreme heat waves, unprecedented floods and excess rainfall, landslides, glacier bursts etc, believed to be triggered by climate change and environmental imbalance, the environment as a subject has become of prime importance.
In his reaction, Nagraj Adve, a founder member of Teachers Against the Climate Crisis, said the effectiveness of a compulsory course would depend on what the course covers and how it is covered.
“Certainly, I think it seems to reflect the fact that the environmental issues are affecting us, and the crisis is deepening. So, there’s a need for students to build awareness beyond what they might learn in senior (high) schools,” he said.
“This is something that’s needed,” he said, adding that climate change topics also needed to be brought into the curriculum, in a detailed and specialised way.
He said: “Students could be made aware of carbon taxes and similar topics that are linked to the economy.”
