Climate change and education as strategies to strengthen environmental awareness, resilience and citizen participation in the face of global challenges
Climate change has been identified as one of the most urgent global challenges due to its effects on ecosystems, as well as on the economy, health, food security, governance, and the well-being of societies. The purpose of this report was to examine the role of education as a tool for improving environmental awareness, resilience, and citizen participation in response to the ecological challenges caused by climate change. For this purpose, this scientific essay was based on a critical and integrative analysis of recent scientific literature published in indexed journals covering research areas such as environmental education, climate literacy, resilience, governance, and sustainability. This analysis indicated that the climate crisis transcends a purely environmental perspective and represents a highly multidimensional problem requiring coordinated responses from educational systems, public policies, and social participation. It was found that education itself promotes the development of competencies related to climate risk awareness, sustainable values, responsible lifestyles, and the fostering of adaptation processes and collective action. As the main contribution, this study introduces an integrative conceptual model that links climate change, education, climate literacy, environmental awareness, sustainable values, resilience, citizen participation, and collective action to the construction of sustainable societies as a sequence. Finally, education emerged as the central axis connecting scientific knowledge and social transformation.