Climate change is at work all over the world and its consequences are already quite visible. It affects us all and should be a priority for our education systems, as recalled in Article 12 of the Paris Agreement, which emphasizes the importance of climate change education.

The Office for Climate Education (OCE), created in 2018 at the initiative of La main à la pâte Foundation and the scientific community, is an ambitious response to this global need.

The OCE aims to organize strong international cooperation between scientific bodies, NGOs and educational institutions to educate present and future generations about climate change, to equip them with the tools of understanding and action to protect them from preconceptions, ideologies or irrationality, and to prepare them to live in a changing world.

The OCE and its partners have a mission to promote climate change education worldwide through:

• Quality educational resources, based on the IPCC reports (of which the OCE is an official observer since 2021), which emphasize interdisciplinarity and active pedagogy;
• a professional development program to familiarize teachers with climate science, active pedagogy and project design;
• design and implementation of national -or international- operational projects.

Based in Paris, the operational OCE team coordinates a worldwide network of national and regional partners. This network is supported by both the scientific community (laboratories, academies of science, IPCC, etc.), NGOs and local or national educational authorities. This community of practice, accompanied by the OCE, ensures that schools get moving to face future challenges in a sustainable and holistic way, deeply rooted in their social environment and local communities.

A center under the auspices of UNESCO

In 2020, the Office for Climate Education became a category 2 center under the auspices of UNESCO. This institutionalization of the OCE  aims to promote climate change education at the international level, with a special focus on emerging countries.