Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) dire warnings on the impact of human-induced climate change has provided an instantaneous wake-up call for swift actions to strengthen the global response towards major climate-related risks. This calls for an immediate action to inculcate fundamental knowledge on climate change to foster the contemporary society towards environmental stewardship and sustainability practices. Importantly, such moves should be started from the children as they are going to represent the future stakeholder society that will embark in various development activities to meet the future human needs without undermining the stability and integrity of the natural ecosystems.
In response to this, a ‘Climate Change and Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon Awareness Program’ was organized on 26th March 2018 for the secondary school children of SMK Seri Hartamas by Grand Challenge Research Group (GC002-15SUS) in collaboration with Sustainability Science Research Cluster and Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, University of Malaya. YBhg. Datin Zarina Binti Abd Rahman, the headmaster of SMK Seri Hartamas, welcomed University of Malaya to engage the secondary school children in this programme and emphasised that the school has to be empowered on science activities. The aim of the event is to foster some fundamental awareness of climate change, UHI, and associated issues through interactive and fun-based activities for the lower-secondary school children. The concept of this event is similar to an ‘ExploRace’, where children in groups of ten have to patronize individual checkpoints to obtain clues to solve a crossword puzzle on Urban Heat Island phenomenon. A total of five checkpoints were set up and each checkpoint arranged some activities related to climate change issues. Meanwhile, short presentations on introduction to climate change, UHI and air pollution were inserted in between the main agenda to instill some basic knowledge of climate change issues. The winners received the token of appreciations for their efforts. Lastly, Prof. Dr. Wong Li Ping wrapped-up the event with a brief talk session on how the children can engage themselves in combating the climate change.
In a nutshell, this program serves as an initial move of Grand Challenge team, leads by Dr. Nasrin Aghamohammadi, to spread its wings out for the empowerment and activate participation of the children in tackling climate change issues at the local level. Proper and effective dissemination of knowledge is pivotal in the creation of new generation stakeholders and decision makers who can perform pragmatic evidence-based decisions to sustain climate-friendly living environments for the future.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Nasrin Agha Mohammadi,
Department of Social and Preventive Medicine,
Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya,
50603 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia.
E-mail: [email protected]
References
Journals:
Aflaki, A., Mirnezhad, M., Ghaffarianhoseini, A., Ghaffarianhoseini, A., Omrany, H., Wang, Z. H., & Akbari, H. (2017). Urban heat island mitigation strategies: A state-of-the-art review on Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong. Cities, 62, 131-145.
Ramakreshnan, L., Aghamohammadi, N., Fong, C. S., Ghaffarianhoseini, A., Ghaffarianhoseini, A., Wong, L. P., Hassan, N., Sulaiman, N. M. (2018). A Critical Review of Urban Heat Island Phenomenon in the Context of Greater Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sustainable Cities and Society, 39, 99-113.
Wong, L. P., Alias, H., Aghamohammadi, N., Aghazadeh, S., & Sulaiman, N. M. N. (2017). Urban heat island experience, control measures and health impact: A survey among working community in the city of Kuala Lumpur. Sustainable Cities and Society, 35, 660-668.
Ramakreshnan, L., Aghamohammadi, N., Fong, C. S., Bulgiba, A., Zaki, R. A., Wong, L. P., & Sulaiman, N. M. (2017). Haze and health impacts in ASEAN countries: a systematic review. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 1-16.
Ramakreshnan, L., Aghamohammadi, N., Fong, C. S., Ghaffarianhoseini, A., Wong, L. P., Sulaiman, N. M. (2018). Empirical study on temporal variations of canopy-level Urban Heat Island effect in the tropical city of Greater Kuala Lumpur. Landscape and Urban Planning (submitted)
Fong, C. S., Aghamohammadi, N., Sulaiman, N. M., Ramakreshnan, L. (2018). A review on outdoor thermal comfort assessment in the tropical region of Southeast Asia (In-progress)
Fong, C. S., Ramakreshnan, L., Aghamohammadi, N., Sulaiman, N. M., (2018). A comprehensive bibliometric review of global outdoor thermal comfort research: analysis and visualization (In-progress)
Books:
Logaraj Ramakreshnan, Nasrin Aghamohammadi, Fong Chng Saun, Nik Meriam Sulaiman, Wong Li Ping, Rafidah Noor, Noor Rosly Hanif (2018) Climate literacy: a primary move to expand the frontiers of climate education, COEHUM Publisher, 25 p
Fong Chng Saun, Nasrin Aghamohammadi, Logaraj Ramakreshnan, Nik Meriam Sulaiman, Wong Li Ping, Rafidah Noor, Noor Rosly Hanif (2018) Climate literacy: Influence of Urban Design and Greening on Urban Microclimate, COEHUM Publisher, 30p.
Chapter-in-books:
Aghamohammadi, N. & Isahak, M. (2018) Climate change and Air pollution in Malaysia. In Rais Akhtar & Cosimo Palagiano (Eds.) Climate Change and Air Pollution the impact on human health in developed and developing countries (241-255).Switzerland: Springer Nature
Aghamohammadi, N., Ramakreshnan, L., Fong, C.S., Wong, L.P., Sulaiman, NM. (2018). Extreme Weather Events-Flooding, Heat Waves and Other Climate Related Disasters and Health Development. In Rais Akhtar (Eds.). Climate related disasters and health impacts in Malaysia (submitted)
