The Environmental and Climate Change Literacy Projects (ECCLPs, pronounced “eclipse”) is a collaborative effort to educate the more than 400,000+ graduating high school students per year in California to become literate in climate change and environmental justice issues and solutions.
Ten Strands partners with the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems and key entities to advance PK–12 climate and environmental literacy, justice, and action through this innovative arrangement. ECCLPs is grounded in the idea that climate change is an urgent issue that must be addressed and education must be part of the solution.
On September 15, 2022, approximately 400 climate activists gathered in person and virtually for a (re)launch event of ECCLPs. The event was held at UC Irvine where we, alongside our UC and CSU partners, re-engaged major stakeholders in climate and environmental literacy, justice and action. Read about the inauguration of ECCLPs here. The ECCLPs Executive Committee and the UCI School of Education are now launching initiatives focused on the advancement of PK–12 climate and environmental justice literacy through subcommittees focused on research, teaching and learning, and community partnerships.
Learn more about ECCLPs here.
Background: Strategies and recommendations to achieve this mission were published in a report, Achieving Climate Stability and Environmental Sustainability: PK–12 Education as Part of the Solution for Bending the Curve, by the UC and CSU university systems, Ten Strands, and a steering committee. The report was showcased at the December 2019 Environmental and Climate Change Literacy Project and Summit (ECCLPS) held at UCLA that brought together more than 220 higher education leaders, PK–12 educators, researchers, policymakers, and others to further strategize the implementation and scaling up of the recommendations in the report.
From March 2020 to date, members of the ECCLPs steering committee met to prioritize and advance recommendations in the report, which resulted in work on a concept paper proposing a joint UC–CSU initiative focused on climate change literacy and environmental justice. After a brief pause to attend to the urgent needs of students, faculty, staff, and families during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the ECCLPs Executive Committee continued to build on this work. Check out this report we wrote on the impacts of COVID-19 on environmental literacy efforts in California.
