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Hello! Eden and I were in charge of doing a write up of the survey analysis in a blog post to mark the end of the bilateral collaborations. To go into more detail about this survey, our group for the #Decarbonize project was given the task of distributing a survey to as many Canadian youth from the ages of 12-19 years old. This survey was asking youth how well they were being educated on climate change and water issues, whether youth felt they had influence over the government when it comes to these issues, etc. After a week of distributing the survey, we all had a meeting and viewed the results of how many youth completed the survey, where each person was from and what their responses was. Our group then decided to have individual people analyze different sections of the survey and write a response addressing the section they were assigned. Once the summaries were complete, we had a meeting with the Jubilee School from Jordan sharing our results. We both hope that this blog post helps with the creation of the paper that will be presented in Morocco very soon!
COP 22 Canada National Dialogue Survey on Climate Change Responses
*Edits have been made to the original document.
It is important to note that the vast majority of the youth that we have received the survey information from up to this point is from Alberta – only a single province of Canada.
For all sections of the survey, except the written response, students were asked to rate 5 statements from ‘Strongly Disagree’ to ‘Strongly Agree’ based on their beliefs and experiences. Here are the summarized analyses from each group member. (Eden and I analyzed the first portion of the survey that students were required to answer. This was not originally a part of the survey analysis, but we both felt it was important to include this section in our blog.)
The five statements in the first portion were: changes in the climate are impacting me personally, changes in the climate are impacting members of my community, my community has secure access to water, my community cares about taking action on climate change, and my individual actions have a significant effect on the global climate. Overall, students answered with ‘somewhat in agreement’ for most of the statements. This was very concerning because the youth is the future of humanity. If youth feels as though they do not have a voice or that climate change regarding water is only a small issue, then they will most likely not take an interest in what is happening with our world’s water sources. The one statement that most students responded with ‘strongly agree’ was ‘my community has secure access to water’. This was very interesting because most youth have secure access to water, meaning that they are not too concerned with what is going on with water and climate change. This largely reflects students responses to the other four statements. Since most students do not see any urgent water supply problems occurring in their communities, they are assuming that it is the same situation in other places.
Next, a girl from our group, named Harem, analyzed the “Environmental Footprint” section of the survey. The question that she chose to analyze further asked the youth if they knew where the water they drink comes from. 69% of youth in Canada ‘strongly agreed’ and 31% ‘strongly disagreed’. Personally speaking, in grade 8 Harem mentioned that her school had a field trip to her city’s water plant, and her class was shown how the water gets to their homes, the process and steps it takes for the water to be cleansed, and overall how the water in her city was affected. She said this represented how her community and the government were keen on making sure youth in Canada knew about where the water we drink and use comes from. In her conclusion she stated this showed that the majority of youth felt educated about how they, and their community, were using water.
Next, I analyzed the “Climate Change and your Nation” portion of the survey. One of the statements students were asked to rate in this section was “I feel like I have an influence on my government’s response to climate change”. 53.7% survey takers responded with disagreement and 29.2% responded neutrally. I concluded that most youth feel as though they have no voice when it comes to the big decision makers. It is almost as if the new generation believes that they can only have a passive role in the decision making process.
Leah, another girl in our group, analyzed the “Climate Change Education” part of the survey. One of the statements was “I talk to my parents/community elders about Climate Change”. 59% of the surveyed youth disagreed in some way with the question. 31 of that percent strongly disagreed. Leah said this question is one of two that implies the generation our parents belonged to wasn’t educated about climate change. The problem is one that has a majority of youth as responders. Leah believed that this portion of the survey showed the gap of knowledge between generations, and that the job to educate the older generations - on the issues surrounding climate change - needs to be pursued.
Eden looked over the Student Question portion of the quiz. “My community is taking the appropriate course of action to preserve the environment through water conservation” was a statement on the survey that 49.2 percent of student choose the middle ground for, meaning that they were undecided on the answer. The remaining 50.8 votes were cast in nearly equal proportions in agreement or disagreement. Eden said this showed that a large portion of Canadian (or at least Albertan) youth was unsure of what their communities were doing to preserve the environment and its water supply. Eden said she believed that in order for progress to be made in stopping climate change, communities need to have open discussions about what goals they should set for the environment, as youth are the future of every global project, and it is vital that they are included in the climate change discussions of our communities. Eden felt that youth needed to be aware about what their communities were doing for the environment so that they could make informed contributions in the future.
Finally, Mrs. Rizzo, one of the group teachers, looked over the ‘Written Response’ portion of the the survey. She found that out of all the answers, there were roughly 50% of respondents who identified that climate change and water use were important issues for them. She said that some of the reasons listed were that youth felt it was their generation’s responsibility to fix the problems that exist today. If they didn’t, then the Earth’s environment would be destroyed forever. She also found students believed that climate change was affecting many other issues on Earth. Of the other responses, about 25% mentioned that they did not feel it was not a crucial issue.The greatest factor contributing to this was that students were not educated enough about climate change regarding issues with water. The other 25% had no comment. She felt that this is a huge problem!! She posed the question of how do people get youth educated about these climate issues if they are not learning it in school?? Mrs. Rizzo personally stated that climate change is a huge problem people should be focussing on to fix. She said that the future is affected by what we do today as well as in the future, so we need to act on this issue now.
Overall, it was a very interesting response to our survey from youth and hopefully this information can be used to further our research and ideas on what we will be putting in the paper! We hope the responses will continue to grow and develop as more people answer the survey.
- Katrina and Eden
