School Strike for Climate - An Educational Model for Development

The past decade brought major changes in the field of development, regarding the economic, political and social areas. The 2000's marked the Sustainable Development Goals, growing development aid for developing countries, the emergence of new technologies that improved the quality of life, social movements that made an impact on states and societies enhancing societal security, and so on and so forth. The turning point of the 2000's has been the year 2019 when the climate change crises became a visible issue, discussed at global level. In this article I will focus on how educational responsibility for environment is influencing community development referring to the improvement of societal security. I intend to discuss the movement of School Strike for Climate that started in Sweden in order to raise awareness to the issue of climate change crises. This movement has had a great impact in society, especially within the youngest generation all around the globe. As a major part of this movement, I will focus on the environmental education and conscience that generation Z had achieved so far, this helping in the process of understanding the generation's devotion of stopping climate crisis and also the social vulnerabilities that came with it. Consequently, my goal for this paper is to answer the following question: How climate education enriches the development field and agenda? I will try to answer this question by correlating the educational impact of School Strike for Climate with the European Green Deal Agenda. In order to extend the study area, the purpose of this article is to explore the subject of environmental education through the theoretical approach of security studies, especially the concept of societal security. I will discuss the case of School Strike for Climate as a global movement in relation to European Union's decision to initiate the European Green Deal. I find this relevant because the movement does not only have an educational component, but also through this European Green Deal, societies are coming closer to the target of carbon neutrality, ergo closer to diminishing social vulnerabilities related to this issue. I will find relevant examples that show the need of climate action, arguing that the movement has influenced lots of relevant global actors in order to support the conservation of the planet. In the final part of the paper, I will close with an explanation in regards to the educational factor of the strikes, showcasing the impact it had at European level.