CLIMATE CHANGE in Geography

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– Energy Resource Use and Change

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Presenter: Dr Arorisoe Sibanda

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environment

society

science

sustainability

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www.fundisaforchange.com

Introduction

• As seen in the Geography Energy Exchange course, energy moves into and out of the atmosphere and is transformed across time and space.
• Humans are influencing the ways in which the surface of the Earth and basic energy processes are changed and altered by activities such as farming, changing landscapes, industry, and urban and industrial centres.

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Pre-assessment task

• Click the link below to access the quiz that will test your basic knowledge of Energy Resource Use and Change

https://courses.fundisaforchange.co.za/quizzes/test-you-basic-knowledge-of-energy-resources-use-and-change/

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Objectives

• Distinguishing between the role of human activity as a cause of change and the role of the natural system driving climate change and the interactions between these sources of change.
• Explore different methods of learning that can be integrated into teaching energy resource use and change.
• Explore different methods for assessing knowledge, understanding, and possible individual transformation around notions of energy resource use and change.

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Know your subject

Energy resources

• are all forms of fuels used in the modern world, either for heating, generation of electrical energy, or for other forms of energy conversion processes
• They are generally classified in renewable and non-renewable.
• The use of non-renewable energy sources is causing significant environmental problems because they are responsible for the higher CO2 emissions.

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Related topics within the CAPS, showing relevant grades and terms

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Know Your Subject

Access to resources

• It is more significant to explore critical issues like who makes up the rules that enable some to get access to more, whereas others only have access to little.
• Resilience and vulnerability concepts are very useful, particularly when exploring issues of access, use of resources, and how these actions can influence climate and climate change.
• Vulnerability is a concept that is usually used when exploring notions of how robust or ‘weak’ a community or ecosystem may be in the face of climate stress or shock (e.g., flood or drought).
• Some good local examples of urban and rural vulnerability and resilience include case studies related to the Limpopo Province, for example.
• Resilience is linked to the ability to bounce back after a threat or shock. Can a community easily bounce back after a long drought, or what is that may make them stronger to periods of rain shortages or floods?
• Resilience is described as: “…the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.” (Walker et al., 2004, cited in Folke et al., 2010, p. 20).
• Read more about resilience internationally and within Africa on these useful websites: Resilience Alliance – www.realiance.org Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance – http://community.eldis.org

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Know your subject

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Thus, the use and access to energy, food, and water is a result of and also a cause of climate change. Humans influence how the Earth’s surface and basic energy processes are changed and altered.

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Way forward for South Africa?

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• Watch the following video, “SA-TIED Phase II | Work stream 5: Food, energy, and water in a context of climate change.”

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https://youtu.be/Hptr9Q8dXKU

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Know your subject

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Food access and food production

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• As early as the 1700s, Malthus wrote about the dilemma that the planet may face if the population expanded without a similar resource provision (e.g. food and water). Climate and weather have a very strong influence over resources such as food and water. The links between resource provision and ecosystem services that the planet provides need to be understood for the future sustainability of these resources. Food and fibre are strongly linked to climate (see the extract below from Moorhead (2009) below). Population change (Grade 10 term 2) is also strongly linked to food provision.

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• It has been estimated in recent science that: 25 million more children will be malnourished in 2050 due to climate change without serious mitigation efforts or adaptation expenditures Climate change will increase prices in 2050 by 90% for wheat, 12% for rice and 35% for maize, on top of already higher prices Irrigated wheat yields in 2050 will be reduced by around 30% and irrigated rice yields by 15% in developing countries

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• Source: Alliance between the CGIAR centres and written by Moorhead, A., 2009: Climate and agriculture and food security: A strategy for change.

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Water quantity and quality: links to climate change

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• Water is a critical renewable resource if managed effectively.
• The hydrological cycle ensures that water always circulates through the system (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and groundwater through flow).
• Water, like food, is not just an isolated, stand-alone resource linked to the physical dimensions of climate (e.g. rainfall).
• The state of water, as linked to climate change, has been covered in a special IPCC report on water and is a topic of major research locally.
• It is reported that water is very closely linked to climate – too much water usually results in floods and too little water usually results in droughts.
• As with the section on food, water is not only about supply but is also strongly impacted by the way in which the resource is managed, including regulation. Water quality can deteriorate if it is poorly managed.

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Watch UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s speech during the Climate Action Summit in 2019.

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https://youtu.be/q6jbq1scma4

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Forum Activity:

Find one case study in South Africa or Africa that can explain earth/human system complexities and/or challenges (head) and/or sustainability practices (hands) and/or sustainability principles (hearts). Share this case study with the group. How might you use these case studies in your classroom?

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Quiz:

Click the link below to access the quiz for the Know Your Subject quiz

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https://courses.fundisaforchange.co.za/quizzes/energy-resource-use-and-change-know-your-subject-quiz/

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Useful starting points

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• It is often useful to look through a few newspapers or do an online search on current news stories involving climate change – this will provide you with a range of pictures and mini-stories to work with for various activities.
• There are also a number of useful YouTube videos and podcasts sharing climate change stories that you can download. Alternatively, you can use a selection of case studies from some of the international reports.
• Such resources can illustrate the relationship between the biophysical and socio-economic drivers of climate change.
• They can give you starting points for your classroom work, and create a link to the real world for your learners.

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Also, click the link below to watch Rob’s video about expanding conventional subject pedagogy for ESD.

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https://youtu.be/MQjH__Q32jI

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Strategies for improving pedagogy

Scenario-planning

• Use the article to design a scenario planning activity.
• You may want to include activities for reading and summarising the ‘story of climate change’ told by the two case studies. Asking the learners to identify the impacts of climate change described in the article will help them to make links between their existing knowledge of climate change and climate vulnerability.
• Asking the learners whether any of the impacts described in the case studies are relevant to them will assist them in making connections to their own lives and potential vulnerability in their lives.
• Asking learners to reflect on whether they have heard about similar issues within their communities will also help them reflect on whether climate change is already affecting their lives.
• Remember that scenario planning involves predicting how things could occur based on the available data.

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Strategies for improving pedagogy

Learning by doing

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Design a learning by doing activity

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• Read articles about climate heroes and heroines. After reading these stories, ask the learners to design a plan to improve their resilience to climate change.

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Think about the following when designing your activity:

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• Remember that you will need to assist learners to make a link between their vulnerabilities to climate change (that they identified as part of the scenario-planning activity), and how they can improve their resilience.
• Their plans should clearly reflect which vulnerabilities they are responding to and how their proposed project will make them or their community more resilient.
• It is useful to remind learners to focus on practical things they can do (for example, practical activities that can improve their food security or water conservation).
• It would be ideal to work with learners to implement some of their community projects.
• Remember that these activities can be designed as individual and group tasks.

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Strategies for improving pedagogy

Fieldwork and collaborative research

• Case studies can be used as starting points for a research project. Ideas for fieldwork include mapping the condition of learners’ natural environments (Are there signs of drought or flooding already? Are there things that would make them more vulnerable to weather extremes, like erosion or poor water conservation techniques? etc.)

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Things to remember:

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• Fieldwork needs to be focused and have a specific aim – what information does the learners need to gather, and why is this information useful and relevant? What will it tell them about resilience or vulnerability?
• How will learners use their gathered information to make sense of climate change and its impacts on their communities?

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Strategies for improving pedagogy

Role play and debating

• The same case studies (or articles and videos) can be used as a basis for role play.
• You could ask learners to pretend they are reporters telling the story of what happened.
• Ask learners to review the information within the case study and develop a news report – either the case study or the stories of heroes and heroines can be used because the good news is as important as being aware of the negative impacts of climate change.
• Role play allows learners to explore and put themselves in other people’s shoes from various perspectives.

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Things to remember when designing role-play activities:

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• Asking learners to adapt the stories for their own communities, using the information they have collected in one of the previous activities, will allow them to present their findings in a new way.
• You will need to give learners a time limit for their plays.
• Role play is often more successful as a group activity.
• Remember to ask yourself what the purpose of the role play is – What do you want learners to learn about climate vulnerability and resilience? Will role play help you to teach this?

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Strategies for improving pedagogy

Key things to remember

• Learners will need to do enough research to debate based on facts and not simply based on their feelings or opinions. This research can be done as a group task.
• It is useful not to have too many people debating at once – small teams supporting each side of the debate are more practical than big teams or individuals. You will need to open up the discussion to the rest of the class after the initial debate so they can contribute views that were not represented.
• A debate usually needs to be followed up with an activity that supports learners to make sense of and record their learning during the debate – this could be asking them to write a mini news report on the debate and the two sides of the argument.
• You will need to prepare some prompting questions to keep the debate moving – these should be provocative – something that opens up the debate and discussion and should move between the two (or more) sides of the conversation.

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Activities

Forum Activity

Explain how you would use fieldwork to teach a particular topic/concept that is related to Energy Resource Use and Change.

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Your writeup should address the following questions:

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What is the focus of the field trip?

What is the specific aim?

What information do the learners need to gather, and why is this information useful and relevant?

What will the information that will be gathered during the field trip tell learners about resilience or vulnerability?

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Quiz:

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Click the link below to access the quiz for the Improve Your Knowledge activity

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https://courses.fundisaforchange.co.za/quizzes/energy-resource-use-and-change-improve-your-teaching-practices-quiz/

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Improve your assessment practices

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• The focus is on testing knowledge, understanding, and possible individual transformation around notions of climate change in terms of complex interactions and how energy is used and transformed by humans and other processes.

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Pre-assessment task

• Click the link below to access the quiz that will test your basic knowledge of assessment

https://courses.fundisaforchange.co.za/quizzes/quiz-testing-the-basic-understanding-of-assessment/

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Improve your assessment practices

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Strategies to improve assessment practices

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Basic – factual recall, remembering type assessments

• Learners could be asked to draw and construct diagrams showing where and how these atmospheric pressures are located on the globe and what they produce e.g., high pressure usually produces or is associated with dry, sinking air.
• Another key element in the exercises and subsequent assessment is to ensure that learners can show why such phenomena occur, where they occur, and what can be done about their impacts. The various systems can then be expanded by examining HOW they may change in the future given climate change.
• To test such knowledge one can ask learners to answer factual recall questions on climate systems; one can also give them graphics of a low-pressure and high-pressure system and ask them to label and explain how they move and distribute energy or one can give them a specific situation e.g. a ‘drought’ case and ask them what pressure system is usually associated with such weather or climate.
• The marks assigned for these assessments will vary but again, marks should be given for the accurate understanding shown of how the phenomenon develops, together with where and what can be done to best live with or adapt to the event/outcomes of the phenomena.

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Strategies to improve assessment practices

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Basic factual knowledge that can be assessed through low-order questions

• Shallow assessments in this section would be assessing some of the basic factual knowledge of different energy uses and how these energy systems operate in the world.
• Various energy types e.g. renewable and non-renewable, could be assessed as well as examining which countries produce the most greenhouse gases.
• Here the assessment would be examining recall and remembering important skills, but not the only skills required.
• Examples of some of the types of tests and exam assessments can be obtained from the relevant Department of Education.
• These assessments examine some basic remembering and analysis but one notes the assessment is lighter on the higher-order skills e.g., creating.

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Strategies to improve assessment practices

Deeper / higher-order types of assessments (analysis, evaluating, and creating)

• Assessment in this section can be very interesting both for the learner and the teacher. One is trying to assess resource use (e.g., energy) to probe values, issues such as ethics, and other deeper dimensions of energy resource use.
• Several assessments can be presented, starting from a more basic probing of values. For example, a picture of a power station belching out gases can be given to learners as an assessment exercise. Learners can be asked, either in a test situation or in a take-home essay reflection, to comment on the picture.

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Examples of probing questions:

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• Who benefits from the emissions coming from this power station?
• What are the emissions from this power station?
• How do these emissions and the energy they produce contribute to the local and national economy?
• Who makes up the rules of the energy game in South Africa, e.g., who decides how much energy we have, what we pay for energy, etc.?
• The role of big businesses, small users, and larger energy providers, such as Eskom, can be explored here. This could be assessed using a range of criteria depending on the task (e.g., marks would be provided for showing new evidence and a good literature review; marks would be assigned for a good understanding of some of the ‘politics’ and ‘ethics’ that underpin energy use in South Africa; and marks awarded for being able to write clearly about such issues, etc.). Learners may also work on a small project.

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Energy Resource Use and Change

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Portfolio Task: Energy Resources Use and Change

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• This portfolio task is found on the online platform and it aims to assess the understanding and application of knowledge acquired during the course on energy resources use and their impact on climate change. The task involves conducting an in-depth analysis of various energy resources, their utilization patterns, and their role in contributing to climate change. Additionally, you will propose sustainable strategies to address the challenges posed by climate change and promote a transition towards a low-carbon energy future.

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