Citizen participation as a key enabler for successful public education policies in climate change mitigation in Singapore

ABSTRACT

A good climate change education policy should focus not only on education but encourage the participation of both the citizens and the government. The author interviewed policy makers, grassroots leaders and the citizens and found that this interaction between the government (top-down) and the citizens (bottom-up) is sorely missing, which results in a disjoint between what the government wants citizens to know and what the citizens actually know. Without this interaction, climate change education policy will not be successful. The proposed Grassroots Approach (GRA) framework that emerged from the qualitative inquiry describes how climate change education policy can be implemented in the context of societies like Singapore through an integration of the top-down and bottom-up approaches. The 6 stages of the GRA enable policy to be formulated, to provide information to the public, to obtain consultation, to encourage involvement, to garner feedback and to seek advisory, with regards to climate change. The findings not only show an update in its current policy but also an indication of the adoption of GRA in implementing new campaigns and initiatives.

KEYWORDS:

• Grassroots organisations
• top-down approach
• bottom-up approach
• climate change education policy
• climate change
• Singapore

Acknowledgement

The study was done as part of the author's thesis at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.