United Nations

• This year, organizers of Earth Day are calling for widespread climate education as a critical step in the fight against climate change.
• A new report, released in time for global attention for Earth Day on April 22, highlights the impact of climate education on promoting behaviour change in the next generation.

How knowledge becomes ingrained

• Teachers have become increasingly concerned about best practices for supporting their charges as young people express anxiety about environmental futures.
• Similarly, Finnish researchers use biking as an analogy to describe the process by which knowledge becomes ingrained in people’s memory.
• The bike model advocates ways of learning that consider knowledge, identity, emotions and world views.
• More than half of the survey respondents were from Ontario (25 per cent) and Québec (29 per cent).

Challenges with climate education

• However, inclusion of climate education in formal school curricula has come with its own set of challenges.
• Educators in Ontario reported a lack of classroom resources as a barrier when integrating climate change education within the curriculum.
• The United Nations has declared climate education “a critical agent in addressing the issue of climate change” as climate education increases across different settings and for various age groups.

Educators finding ways

• More and more educators are taking steps to find ways to teach climate education in schools.
• As an instructor for several undergraduate-level courses, Olsen focuses on equipping budding educators with the skills and knowledge to incorporate climate education in their classrooms.

All aspects of curricula

• Embedding climate education into all aspects of curricula can take a variety of approaches in and outside of the classroom.
• Environmental education has been packaged in different forms, including broadening school curricula with inclusion in science, but also subjects including English, math and art.

Preety Sharma is a public health and development consultant. As a freelance journalist, she covers climate change, public health and nutrition. Ayeshah Haque is a Clinical Content Specialist at the Association for Ontario Midwives.

• Recent education policy changes and protests about sex education reveal increasing concern and polarization over how sex and gender identity are taught in public schools in Canada.
• They also expose the significant role now played by school boards in constructing the meaning of gender identity and gender expression.
• Changes in how words and terms are used can impact our ability to know about people’s lives and protect their rights.
• Significant shifts are taking place around how we define and understand sex and gender in education and public policy in Canada.

Sex, gender and law

• Yet sex, gender identity and gender expression are not defined in human rights legislation in Canada.
• They should be able to express their concerns and participate in open discussions about the meaning of words we share.

Changes in the definition of sex

• The Charter of the United Nations prohibits sex discrimination.
• The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights precludes discrimination based on sex.

Changes since 2018

Since 2018, the word sex is increasingly defined by the federal government as something that is “assigned at birth.” But there is no consistency across federal departments and agencies. Some continue to define sex as a biological question of male or female. Those that define sex as assigned at birth do not consistently explain how sex is assigned or by whom.

Conceptual shifts around word ‘woman’

• Similar conceptual shifts are taking place around the word woman.
• The word woman was formerly linked to sex and used to refer to female people.
• Now, government departments including the Department of Justice increasingly use the word woman to refer to all people who identify as women.

Defining gender identity

• When gender identity was added to federal human rights legislation, the Department of Justice defined gender identity as:
  “each person’s internal and individual experience of gender.
• A person’s gender identity may or may not align with the gender typically associated with their sex.”
  “A person’s internal and deeply felt sense of being a man or woman, both or neither.
• A person’s gender identity may or may not align with the gender typically associated with their sex.”

School boards define terms differently

• Researchers have identified that secular boards across Ontario define gender identity and gender expression differently from one another.
• Some school boards now define gender identity as something everyone has.

Data collection shifts away from sex towards gender

• A shift away from sex and towards gender (identity) has occurred in data collection practices at the federal government level.
• In 2018, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Department of Justice Canada recommended “ways to modernize how the Government of Canada handles information on sex and gender.” They recommended that “departments and agencies should collect or display gender information by default, unless sex information is specifically needed.” They used “sex” to refer to biological characteristics, and “gender” to refer to a social and personal identity.

Open discussions are overdue

As Canadian society shifts to accommodate the legal recognition of gender diversity, there will be tensions. Ultimately, courts will be tasked with deciding how some of those tensions are resolved, when sex, gender identity and gender expression are all protected in human rights laws. In the meantime, as a society, we need to openly and transparently grapple with some increasingly important questions:
First, how will foundational concepts such as sex, gender identity and gender expression be defined and given effect in education, law, public policy and beyond?
Second, how will tensions between experiences, interests and rights associated with sex and those associated with gender identity and/or gender expression be resolved?
Third, who is best placed to decide how these questions are answered in education, law, public policy and beyond?
Everyone who may be impacted by the answers to these questions should be included in the conversation.
Debra M Haak receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Bar Association Law for the Future Fund, and the Queen's University Faculty Association Fund for Scholarly Research.

• For years, women and girls have been failed by a fragmented, under-resourced health system that is not built to meet their sexual and reproductive health needs.
• Coupled with HIV, complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death for young women aged 15-19 years.
• "Tiko" which provides access to free reproductive health services that can change the course of many lives offering youth-friendly care and comprehensive information.
• Achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights by 2030 will require close collaboration by stakeholders in developing innovative solutions that can dismantle barriers to access among women and girls.

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• SIBUR is implementing a number of plastic collection and recycling projects in collaboration with various partners in its regions of operations.
• According to the Russian Carbon Unit Registry, SIBUR has one of the largest portfolios of climate projects among the Russian companies.
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