The Need for Climate-Smart Education Financing: A Review of the Evidence and New Costing Framework

Despite growing evidence on the impacts of the climate crisis on access to education and learning outcomes, there is a clear gap in identifying the additional costs the climate crisis imposes on education systems. Further, there is little evidence demonstrating the financial and socio-economic returns on specific climate-smart investment in education. To help address this research gap, Part 1 of this report explores the current data and literature with the goal of collating key findings, identifying gaps, and crowding-in further research. To support efforts to build climate-smart education systems across the world, Part 2 of this paper proposes a Climate and Environment Intervention Matrix (CEIM), a tool intended for policymakers, planners, donors, and other education stakeholders that can be used to understand the cost implications of building climate-smart education systems. Part III includes considerations for how governments and their education sector partners can advance the implementation of those systems and how the wider research community can fill the priority data gaps.