Climate Change And Me Awards
- Climate
On the 12th of April 2024, Wits held a ceremony to celebrate the top 20 first year students for their completion and prize-winning climate change blogs.
For a prospective student interested in pursuing a career in climate change, the Climate Change and Me course offers a strong, accessible foundation in the latest research on climate change. As part of the course, all the students are tasked with writing a short blog about their views on climate change, and the top 20 entries are shortlisted and narrowed down to the final three. This years’ winning blog was written by Onalenna Tlholakae who is studying Nursing.
During his keynote speech in the ceremony, the Pro Vice Chancellor for Climate Change, Sustainability and Inequality, Professor Imraan Valodia spoke about the importance of the youth’s involvement in leading the charge to finding solutions to addressing climate change.
In 2022 Wits was one of the first universities globally to offer a university-wide compulsory climate course for first year students. The course coordinator, Ariel Prisloo indicated “Climate Change and Me is truly an exciting course to design because it engages with the science behind climate change as well as contemporary issues like the just transition in South Africa. For this (the 2024 iteration), students were so much more engaged and enthusiastic to discuss these challenges, even asking about climate change activities that are available on campus. It was, therefore, no surprise that the blog competition produced excellent opinion pieces around varied aspects of climate change from climate activists to fashion”.
The course is offered during the Gateway To Success orientation program to equip first year students from all faculties with the latest climate science and skills to fully understand the underlying socioeconomic issues emerging from climate change.
- Onalenna Tlholakae [BNurs] - “My journey started with my leaving home (Pretoria) to the sight of my brother fixing himself a sandwich. Might not be much, right? I know. Still, this instance is important because he did this with the refrigerator door wide open. Wild, I tell you! Did you know that fridges contain the F-gas Hydrofluorocarbon that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions?”
- Katherine Hollingworth [BA in Digital Arts] – “...detachment can cause youth to be disinterested in climate change. We can see floods and droughts everyday on the news, but if it’s not affecting us - why care? This detachment from the truly severe impacts of climate change can reinforce the future denialist idea that climate change is exaggerated in the media. But we cannot remain detached forever. South Africa is already experiencing impacts such as Day Zero in Cape Town and floods in KZN… predicting that 80% of injuries, deaths and illnesses related to climate change will be suffered by children and youth.”
- James Ihlenfeldt [BEngSc in Digital Arts] – “ The large debate is about who should be responsible for climate change, developing countries or developed countries? Developed countries have been established and industrialized for a longer period and have caused a significant portion of the overall greenhouse gas emissions in the past. In addition, developed countries have contributed to 70% of the total greenhouse gas emissions over the past two decades due to fact that fossil fuel production is primarily in developed countries. In contrast, developing countries are also to blame…”