The Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (GEI) is pleased to announce the Georg Arnhold International Summer Conference, which will take place online from 23 to 27 August 2021. The Summer Conference will explore aspects and topics related to the environmental crisis and education.
The potentially grave consequences of humankind’s destruction of intact eco-systems and of climate change are currently being dramatically illustrated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Aside from the acute threat currently provided by the virus, climate change is the biggest challenge facing the global community in the twenty-first century.
The negative effects of climate change not only fundamentally challenge our lifestyles but also call our development and growth paradigms into question, especially in countries in the global north, which are the primary polluters. The causes and consequences of climate change are deeply intertwined with global patterns of inequality, in which climate change has a multiplier effect on existing vulnerabilities, particularly in the global south. The interplay between climate change, conflict, poverty, hunger and migration lead to ever more complex emergencies. While industrialised nations are able to take measures to counteract the ramifications, poorer countries or regions already destabilised by crises are more acutely affected, and particularly populations who were already vulnerable such as old people, women, children and those affected by poverty. The weakest and most at risk people, particularly those in the global south, carry the heaviest burden of the effects of climate change despite currently and historically having contributed least to its root causes.