Climate change policy
Adopted by the AEU SA Branch Council on 9 April 2020.
The AEU SA Branch recognises a Climate Change emergency and will respond to this across and beyond the education environment as follows:
Education will:
- Focus on climate change from a solutions-based perspective, embedding it as a core element of all learning;
- Support preschool, schools and TAFEs to take solutions-based climate action; and
- Embed education for sustainability as a compulsory unit of study in initial teacher education (ITE).
AEU SA Branch/school/preschool/TAFE will:
- Embrace and value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices and leadership;
- Participate in a carbon emissions audit of the workplace;
- Create a planned reduction of carbon emissions with the urgent goal of zero;
- Enact policy, curriculum and priorities that reflect the need for sustainable and ongoing change as a result of climate emergency;
- Support student agency through genuine and bona fide opportunities to participate in consultative processes on decisions that affect the learners in our care;
- Unequivocally stand in solidarity with our students and support their democratic right to take action and give voice to their real concerns.
- Support all learning communities to develop a Site Environment Management Plan; and
- Provide professional learning opportunities and structures around climate change and education for sustainability.
The AEU SA Branch calls on the Department for Education to:
- Embrace and value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices and leadership;
- Provide targeted resourcing on an ongoing basis to minimise the impacts of climate change through focuses such as professional learning, eco-infrastructure development, curriculum and policy development and employment of additional staff to counter eco-anxiety;
- Include environmental impact assessments and build to 5 star environmental rating levels all infrastructure works; and
- Maintain, develop and coordinate state-wide strategies, programs and organisations to support learning environments to reduce, recycle, re-use, refuse as environmentally sound waste management practice.
The AEU SA Branch calls on Governments to:
- Work with an evidence-based and non-partisan approach in response to global heating to protect Australia’s peoples, their well-being and livelihoods;
- Urgently move towards zero carbon emissions, beginning with a carbon emissions audit of all public sector facilities;
- Update existing energy reliance to embrace renewable sources in all areas of public sector transport, facilities and operational demands;
- develop a well designed and resourced public transport system that includes a focus on safe walking and cycling routes;
- Provide and promote educational opportunities for sustainable industries through tertiary courses for TAFE delivery; and
- Seek the urgent deployment of methods for carbon sequestration (land and ocean).
The AEU SA Branch will:
- Work with SA Unions to develop greater climate awareness and climate action in all industries and workplaces.
- Demand a just transition policies and strategies for workers in carbon intensive industries and their communities at a federal level. This will recognise education in preschools, schools and TAFE as a vitalelement in mitigating the effects on workers’ lives and ensure access to the necessary quality and life-long education.
- Seek full divestment of SuperSA from the fossil fuel industry.