Climate Justice (vulnerability vs emissions) Top Trumps

• About this resource

  This activity is part of a wider suite of excellent Climate Change Resources for Education developed by Kit Marie Rackley (Geogramblings) and supported by the Geographical Association, which can be accessed here (scroll down for the Top Trumps activity, but don’t scroll too fast, the other activities are great, too!)

  This activity helps to highlight climate justice issues using carbon emission and vulnerability data for a selection of countries using ‘Top Trump’ cards. Students compare countries’ historical carbon emissions and their vulnerability to climate change, revealing that nations with lower emissions often face greater climate impacts. This activity emphasises the need for equitable climate policies and international support for vulnerable countries, underscoring the importance of addressing climate justice by helping those who have contributed least to the problem but suffer the most.

  This activity was designed with OCR GCSE Geography in mind, but can be easily adapted to work with other curricula and exam requirements.

  All resources at the link above are free to access and shared under Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution Licence. New users will need to enter an email address to access them.

• Testimonies from educators

  This resource was sourced by the research team, rather than recommended by an educator taking part in the research. However, educators working at a range of educational stages talked about using games with their students to bring complex concepts to life. For example:

  “Games bring the kind of reality to life, I suppose. And just getting them [students] to get the information. I mean, I would usually encourage people to research smartly if you like, you know, beyond the headlines”. Dublin-based post-primary educator.

  Another educator talked about using a chairs game to illustrate resource inequalities between countries: 

  “You bring all the chairs together, and then you separate them into the different continents, based on the population. So the kids represent the population, the chairs represent the global wealth. And then you look at: well, who's producing the most carbon dioxide? And then who's hosting the most refugees? […] And then kids will maybe bring up “well, you know, the United States has got loads of chairs, but there's only two people sitting there, whereas on the African continent, there's only one chair, and everyone's trying to share it, there's not the same distribution of resources” Dublin-based senior primary educator.