PROMOTING CLIMATE LITERACY THROUGH ENGAGING WITH WORLD LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Climate in Arts and History (http://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/) is an open educational resource geared towards the general public and grades 6-12 students and teachers. Currently under development by an interdisciplinary team of students, faculty, and staff from Smith College, this resource aims to promote climate literacy beyond the natural and environmental sciences. This is accomplished by exploring examples of past and present climate relationships to various aspects of human history and culture through topical entries on the themes of History, Art, Literature, Music, and Languages.

The Languages section starts with “Lessons from World Languages and Cultures,” and guides the readers to various examples of language connections to climate and climate education. Included are entries on Indigenous languages (such as “Climate-related Terminology in Indigenous Languages'' and “Effects of Colonization and Climate Change on Indigenous Languages”) as well as a list of about 20 languages spoken around the world today, in addition to ancient Greek and Latin. The connections to climate are explored in three parts: 1) Climate education in the countries of the language; 2) Climate and culture in those countries; and 3) Language practice including information on vocabulary and grammar for a translation challenge that involves a short text on the general topic of climate.

Part 1 on the Spanish language, for example, summarizes information on climate education in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. This part utilizes information from County Profiles of the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project, if available. Among other examples, Part 2 of the same entry explores the impacts of climate change on olive oil production in Spain, winemaking in Argentina, and alpaca raising in Peru. Language practice/Part 3 is being developed with the help of experts from Smith College Translation Studies Concentration. An additional objective of creating such cross-disciplinary multilingual content is to encourage our target audience to engage in the studies of global languages and cultures. We continue to seek feedback via climate@smith.edu to improve the visibility and effectiveness of this resource.