Equipping children and young people to thrive in a rapidly changing world therefore means enabling them to understand and meet the global challenge that climate change presents.

The Review noted that changes to curriculum content are only part of the picture and that teaching also has an important part to play through the use of climate-related examples and resources to teach existing curriculum content.

(Government response to CAR, Nov 2025)

The government response to CAR acknowledges the need to improve education about climate, environment and sustainability. The core responsibility for this is placed in Geography, Science and Citizenship, however, there is also acknowledgement that examples should be woven in across all curriculum subjects that can both help to teach that subject and education about the climate crisis.

The HA has been supporting articles, CPD and resources that will enable teachers to weave climate and environment into history teaching for a number of years. You may also be interested to know that the HA facilitates the Teach Environmental Histories teacher network who meet online. The following is a selection of HA resources to support you to develop your knowledge of history’s role in climate and environment education and to support your planning.

Doing history for climate action – In this 2024 article from The Historian, Hannah Worthen and Briony McDonagh explain how they are using historic records of floods and flood management to engage communities in Hull in new conversations and to prompt vital action. 

History and the climate crisis – This 2024 article, co-authored by Kate Hawkey, Paula Worth, David Rawlings and Dan Warner-Meanwell, first outlines key arguments from Kate’s pioneering book History and the Climate Crisis, before illustrating the range of ways in which a group of Bristol teachers, have begun to wrestle with this new curriculum challenge.

Industrialisation, energy and the climate crisis – This 2024 article, written mainly by Alison Kitson with reflections on classroom experience from Nebiat Michael, focuses on teaching about the industrial revolution. It offers new ways of framing the topic, both as a result of the ‘energy binge’ on which modern civilisation is built and as the third of four fundamental turning points in the relationship between humans and the rest of nature.

Climate change: greening the curriculum? – In 2016, inspired by the news that Bristol had become the UK’s first Green Capital, Kate Hawkey, Jon James and Celia Tidmarsh set out to explore what a ‘Green Capital’ School Curriculum  might look like. In this article, they explain how they created a cross-curricular project to deliver in-school workshops focused on the teaching of climate change, involving student teachers from the subject disciplines of history, geography and science.

Teaching History 194: Climate and Environment – Teaching History 194 is dedicated entirely to climate and environment. In this edition you’ll find a range of articles. 

Learning history outside the classroom in an age of climate crisis – In 2024, as the extent of the climate crisis became ever more apparent, Helen Snelson began rethinking her approach to teaching within and about the historic environment via learning outside the classroom. This article unpacks her approach.

Cunning Plan... for teaching about climate change through the history curriculum – In this 2024 cunning plan, Nebiat Michael presents a Cunning Plan that asks of the climate crisis: “How did we get here”?

When did humans take over the world? – How can we bring climate change into our classrooms without making it ‘small’? In this 2024 article, Peter Langdon tackled this question by drawing on a ‘big history’ approach to design an enquiry that allowed his students to think about the relationship between humans and climate throughout the whole history of our species. 

What Have Historians Been Arguing About… climate history – Historians have been slow to join the conversation about the experience and impact of climate over time. This edition of What have Historians Been Arguing About..? examines the state of the field.

Cunning Plan… for using the story of Eunice Foote to bring environmental history into the curriculum – In this 2025 Cunning Plan, Paula Worth demonstrates how to bring Eunice Foote into lessons about environmental history.

Environmental history and the challenges of the present  – In this Historian article, in a wide-ranging survey of the field, Amanda Power explains what it means to do environmental history at a time of climate crisis, and points to the opportunities and challenges in this thriving area of research.

The potential of secondary history to respond to the current ecological and climate crisis – In this 2024 article Michael Riley and Alison Kitson seek to unlock the potential of the secondary history curriculum to educate young people about the current ecological and climate crisis in ways that might also inform their thinking about how to create a more sustainable future.

Glacier Tours in the Northern Playground  – Glaciers are on the frontier of the climate crisis. Their ongoing disappearance is one of its most visible effects. In this 2024 Historian article, Christian Drury explores how tourists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries viewed and understood glaciers, and what they contributed to the history of environmental thought.

Cunning Plan… to teach about environmental history in the medieval period – In this 2025 Cunning Plan, Elizabeth Carr demonstrates how to weave climate into teaching of the bigger picture of the Black Death.

Move Me On: dealing with students’ current concerns when teaching the history of climate change – In this 2024 Move Me On article, Michael Riley and Alison Kitson support mentors to deal with trainee concerns about teaching climate and environment when they have a history of activism in this area themselves.

Establishing a dialogue with Year 9 about why environmental history matters – In this 2025 article, Alex Benger opens a dialogue with pupils about why environmental history matters and uses the power of local stories to demonstrate this.

Recorded webinar: Secondary history and the climate crisis – This 2023 webinar demonstrates how secondary history can help students respond to the climate crisis.

Recorded Webinar: Our Human Planet – The Anthropocene is much debated. For the first time in our home planet's 4.5-billion year history a single species began dictating Earth's future. In this webinar, Prof. Mark Maslin traces our environmental impact through our history revealing when humans began to dominate the Earth and shows us what the new epoch means for all of us.