SDG 4 - QUALITY EDUCATION

A warming Arctic is linked with stronger storms. Extreme rainfall is associated with poorer cognitive ability, lower rates of school enrolment and increases in child labour. The Arctic increases the risk of heatwaves, and heat-exposed students are less likely to receive quality education. Access to quality education is a long–term struggle in many Arctic communities. 

Extreme weather events disrupt access to quality education, thereby reducing academic outcomes. Extreme weather events exacerbated by Arctic warming can lead to loss of education material and infrastructure, injury or death of students and teachers, and psychosocial stress.  

 Worldwide, children from the wealthiest households are five times more likely than children from the poorest households to finish primary school (Randell and Grey, 2019). The warming Arctic is intrinsically linked with more powerful monsoons and global heating around the world. In countries such as Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso, such extreme rainfall has been linked to poorer cognitive ability, lower rates of school enrollment and increases in child labor (Ibid.). Elsewhere, heat-exposed students are less likely to receive quality education. Park et al., (2020) document the negative impact of higher temperatures on student testing.

Throughout history, the educational systems across the Arctic nations were central to assimilating Indigenous People, largely through erasing their cultural and linguistic practices. In Canada, over 1.000 unmarked Indigenous children’s graves have been found on the lands of former residential schools. Today few qualified teachers, high staff turnover, lack of infrastructure and long commutes contribute to poor quality of education and low school attendance rates in the Arctic. Only 39 percent of the Nunavut population completes high school, dramatically lower than the Canadian average of 78.3 percent (Rodon et al., 2014). 

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