New Science Kete Teaching Rangatahi About Climate Resilience

Nearly $300,000 in funding has been awarded for hands-on educational science kits to be distributed across the Bay of Plenty by Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi.

The wānanga received the funding from the Centre of Research Excellence Coastal People: Southern Skies to deliver hands-on climate science kits to schools and communities across the Bay of Plenty. 

Research fellow Dr Mawera Karetai said after working with rangatahi who had climate anxiety, she realised education was needed to help provide accurate information and a better understanding of the impact of extreme weather events. 

"What I hear from the kids all the time is that every time it starts to rain they get anxious because they don't understand why we're getting these big weather events, or how flooding and landslides happen." 

She said education around the causes of these issues is becoming increasingly important as extreme weather events become more frequent.

"We know that our kids are inheriting this whenua and it's really important for them to be able to understand the decisions that they have ahead of them around town planning and where they should live," she said.

After two years of planning and trials, a science kete has been developed and will now enter a pilot programme in the Bay of Plenty. 

Trials found practical experiments effectively answered questions and encouraged tamariki to think about how their decisions impact community resilience. 

Each kete comes with tools for experiments including lasers to observe land movement, ice melting experiments to understand polar ice melt, and shake tables. 

Children will build structures to place on the shake table to test how they withstand earthquakes.

The tools aim to “help them think about where to put houses in the future,” she said. 

"So it's just a great way for them to think about the intended and unintended consequences of decision-making," she said. 

Students will also have the opportunity to create a Civil Defence emergency plan for their families to help ease anxiety around weather events.

Kaupapa Māori approaches are woven throughout the kete as well. 

With 50% of the population in the Eastern Bay being Māori, "our rangatahi here in this rohe grow up with waiata and pūrākau, our songs and our stories, and there's a lot of lessons in resilience that come from the past," she said. 

Waiata and pūrākau from the Bay of Plenty often hold lessons about how events, such as weather, impacted people in the past.

Incorporating this knowledge can help build resilience for the future, she said.

The kete will be initially distributed across the Bay of Plenty, but Karetai hopes localised versions could be developed for other regions across the country. 

Following the pilot, Awanuiārangi plans to expand the programme to other coastal communities across Aotearoa and into the Pacific, as further funding partnerships are secured.