Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Fajara, The Gambia.
Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom.
Front Public Health. 2022 Apr 7;10:784915. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.784915. eCollection 2022.
Climate change and environmental degradation are among the greatest threats to human health. Youth campaigners have very effectively focused global attention on the crisis, however children from the Global South are often under-represented (sometimes deliberately) in the dialogue. In The Gambia, West Africa, the impacts of climate change are already being directly experienced by the population, and this will worsen in coming years. There is strong government and community commitment to adapt to these challenges, as evidenced by The Gambia currently being the only country on target to meet the Paris agreement according to the Nationally Determined Contributions, but again children's voices are often missing-while their views could yield valuable additional insights. Here, we describe a "Climate Change Solutions Festival" that targeted and engaged school children from 13 to 18 years, and is to our knowledge, the first peer-to-peer (and student-to-professional) learning festival on climate change solutions for students in The Gambia. The event gave a unique insight into perceived climate change problems and scalable, affordable and sometimes very creative solutions that could be implemented in the local area. Logistical and practical methods for running the festival are shared, as well as details on all solutions demonstrated in enough detail to be duplicated. We also performed a narrative review of the most popular stalls to explore the scientific basis of these solutions and discuss these in a global context. Overall, we find extremely strong, grass-roots and student engagement in the Gambia and clear evidence of learning about climate change and the impacts of environmental degradation more broadly. Nevertheless, we reflect that in order to enact these proposed local solutions further steps to evaluate acceptability of adoption, feasibility within the communities, cost-benefit analyses and ability to scale solutions are needed. This could be the focus of future experiential learning activities with students and partnering stakeholders.
气候变化和环境恶化是对人类健康的最大威胁之一。青年活动家非常有效地将全球注意力集中在这场危机上，但来自南方国家的儿童在对话中往往代表性不足（有时是故意的）。在西非冈比亚，气候变化的影响已经直接影响到当地居民，而且未来几年情况还会恶化。冈比亚政府和社区都有强烈的适应这些挑战的意愿，这一点从冈比亚目前是唯一一个根据国家自主贡献实现《巴黎协定》目标的国家就可以证明，但儿童的声音往往仍然缺失——而他们的观点可能会提供有价值的额外见解。在这里，我们描述了一个“气候变化解决方案节”，该活动针对并吸引了 13 至 18 岁的在校儿童，据我们所知，这是冈比亚第一个针对学生的关于气候变化解决方案的同龄人（和学生与专业人士）学习节。该活动深入了解了人们对气候变化问题的看法，以及在当地可以实施的可扩展、负担得起的，有时非常有创意的解决方案。我们分享了举办该活动的后勤和实际方法，以及所有解决方案的详细信息，这些信息详细到足以复制。我们还对最受欢迎的摊位进行了叙述性评论，以探讨这些解决方案的科学依据，并在全球范围内讨论这些问题。总的来说，我们发现冈比亚学生的参与度非常高，而且对气候变化和更广泛的环境退化的影响有了明确的认识。然而，我们认为，为了实施这些拟议的当地解决方案，需要进一步评估采纳的可接受性、社区内的可行性、成本效益分析以及扩大解决方案的能力。这可能是未来与学生和利益相关者合作的体验式学习活动的重点。
