8 November 2019

If education is defined as an “enlightening experience” then Italy is set to assume the mantle as the world’s most enlightened country as it becomes the first to make sustainability and climate crisis compulsory subjects for schoolchildren.

From September next year all state schools in Italy will begin the process of incorporating the UN’s 2030 agenda for sustainable development into the curriculum, with a minimum of one hour per week given over to issues ranging from human’s influence on the planet to global heating.

“The entire (education) ministry is being changed to make sustainability and climate the centre of the education model,” said Italy’s education minister Lorenzo Fioramonti.

“I want to make the Italian education system the first education system that puts the environment and society at the core of everything we learn in school.”

With other subjects, including physics, maths and geography, also set to be taught from the perspective of sustainability, many hope Italy’s ground-breaking education initiative will prove the model for other countries to follow. 

Fioramonti, a former economics professor, was heavily criticised last year for encouraging students to miss school in order to participate in climate protests while his proposals for taxes on airline tickets, sugary foods and plastics also faced strong resistance.

However, the government’s 2020 budget, presented to parliament in early November, included a tax on both plastic and sugary drinks.

“I was ridiculed by everyone and treated like a village idiot, and now a few months later the government is using two of those proposals and it seems to me more and more people are convinced it is the way to go,” Fioramonti said.

Written by Sam Peters, founding partner at Planted