\n<\/p>\n
Spanish children will be taught how to respond to floods, wildfires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in a drive to help prepare them for the growing impact of the climate emergency.<\/p>\n
The plan was unveiled on Thursday after a summer of forest fires killed four people and less than a year after catastrophic floods claimed more than 220 lives in eastern parts of the country.<\/p>\n
The aim, according to the education ministry, is to provide schools with a package that imparts \u201cthe necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to deal with emergency situations in a safe and effective way\u201d. As well as natural hazards and disasters, it will cover chemical, industrial and nuclear accidents and those related to the transport of dangerous materials.<\/p>\n
More than 8 million children in 25,000 schools will be given the compulsory training, which will be delivered using videos, infographics and other media. Infant and primary school pupils will be given a minimum of two hours of lessons, while older children will receive at least four hours. Spain\u2019s self-governing regions will be able to tailor the training to the different risks they face.<\/p>\n
\u201cInfant school children aged three, four and five, will learn to recognise an alarm and how to spot the first signs of danger, as well as basic safety principles,\u201d the ministry said in a statement. \u201cOlder children will learn to seek out high ground in a flood and to shelter under a desk if the earth starts to shake.\u201d<\/p>\n
It said students would also be taught about \u201cthe differences between information and disinformation in emergency situations\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/span>A wildfire in the Cualedro municipality of Galicia in north-west Spain. Widespread blazes cost four lives last month.<\/span> Photograph: Brais Lorenzo\/EPA<\/p>\n Speaking at the scheme\u2019s launch at a school in the east-central city of Cuenca, the prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, said the aim was to prepare children and young people to respond as well as possible to situations \u201cthat are clearly being made worse by the climate emergency\u201d.<\/p>\n The \u200blessons, which will begin this school year, are one of the measures laid out in a 10-point plan to protect a country on the frontlines of climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we don\u2019t want to bequeath our children a Spain that\u2019s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that\u2019s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that\u2019s greener,\u201d S\u00e1nchez said on 1 September.<\/p>\n The prime minister is calling on Spain\u2019s political class and public to unite for what he calls a \u201cgreat state pact\u201d to tackle the climate crisis.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s leave ideological issues to one side and let\u2019s listen to reason, science and common sense,\u201d he said on Thursday, adding that there was a pressing need for \u201ccommonsense policies to deal with emergencies and the fight against climate change\u201d.<\/p>\n But his calls have been dismissed by the opposition conservative People\u2019s party, which has accused S\u00e1nchez and his government of failing to protect Spaniards and their property from the wildfires.<\/p>\n \u201cState pacts don\u2019t put out the flames, nor do they restore what\u2019s been lost,\u201d a PP spokesperson said last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spanish children will be taught how to respond to floods, wildfires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in a drive to help prepare them for the growing impact of the climate emergency. The plan was unveiled on Thursday after a summer of forest fires killed four people and less than a year after catastrophic floods claimed more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[186,7255,187,4396,583,588,714,656,566],"class_list":{"0":"post-20600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-climate","9":"tag-cope","10":"tag-crisis","11":"tag-disasters","12":"tag-pupils","13":"tag-schools","14":"tag-spain","15":"tag-spanish","16":"tag-teach"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}