The 2020 EGU Declaration of the Significance of Geoscience highlights the need for massive and widespread action to help people around the world to become literate about the changes affecting their and their offsprings’ and communities’ lives. The more people are literate about these changes, the more they can make informed decisions, adapt and mitigate. Previous General Assemblies have addressed climate change literacy (CL). Ocean literacy (OL) has developed strongly in recent years, especially with impetus from the UN Ocean Decade. Ocean-climate literacy (OCL) is an imperative that needs to be addressed massively and urgently, both within and beyond the EGU. We invite colleagues to submit contributions on any aspects of OCL; this can, of course, include CL (without the ocean) and OL (without the climate).

Argument

Climate change (CC) and ocean degradation (OD) are among the greatest threats to humanity. Climate impacts the ocean in massive ways; the ocean is the climate’s most powerful regulator. Separately or combined, they impact every living being and ecological niche, with poorer communities suffering disproportionately. In turn, flora and fauna (incl humans) are suffering. CC and OD are affecting the cryosphere, biodiversity, and food and water security. Given that humans are the prime cause of this devastating change taking us beyond our planetary boundaries, geoethical issues come to the fore.

The 2020 EGU Declaration of the Significance of Geoscience highlights the need for massive and widespread action to help people around the world to become literate about the changes affecting their and their offsprings’ and communities’ lives. The more people are literate about these changes, the more they can make informed decisions, adapt and mitigate. Previous General Assemblies have addressed climate change literacy (CL). Ocean literacy (OL) has developed strongly in recent years, especially with impetus from the UN Ocean Decade. Ocean-climate literacy (OCL) is an imperative that needs to be addressed massively and urgently, both within and beyond the EGU.

We invite colleagues to submit contributions on any aspects of OCL; this can, of course, include CL (without the ocean) and OL (without the climate). We welcome papers related, eg, to learning processes/experiences, instructional materials, curricular innovation, learning games, citizen initiatives, Ocean Decade activities, evaluation, well-used methods, novel approaches and policies, eg, 1. make OCL an essential component in all subjects and at all levels of education; 2. require all people in positions of responsibility (eg, mayors, teachers, doctors, CEOs, ministers, et al) to pass exams on the basics of climate and/or ocean before taking office. Of particular interest are literacy actions that bring in geoethical dimensions. The broad aims of such OCL might include encouraging an intergenerational outlook, developing a sense of the geoethical dimensions of OCL, understanding complexities and implementing solutions.

This session is an opportunity for ECSs, scientists, educators, policy influencers, learning resource developers and other practitioners to share their experience, expertise and research on CL and OL.

Submission guidelines

Please submit a proposal to share your work at the upcoming EGU conference (May 2022), online and in person in Vienna.

The deadline for late proposals is 25 January, 2022.

Please send a short abstract, with full name, affiliation and email, to crookall.consulting at gmail.

More info here:  https://www.egu22.eu/

Conveners

• Convener : David Crookall
• Co-conveners: Giuseppe Di Capua, Bärbel Winkler, Francesca Santoro, Mario Mascagni