Sustainable Schools

29. Franziska Elmer- Schools can be powerful changemakers and are a great place to educate about climate change across curiculums as it is ecological, technical and social problem with solutions in all these sectors.


Listen Later

Franziska Elmer
Research Fellow
School for Field Studies

Franziska Elmer PhD is a research fellow with School for Field Studies at the Center for Marine Resource Studies in South Caicos, Turks and Caicos Islands and one of the hosts and the executive producer of the Sargassum Podcast. She has spent much of her career in the Caribbean, including volunteer work and an internship at STENAPA in St. Eustatius and faculty positions at CIEE in Bonaire and SFS in South Caicos. Furthermore, she serves as treasurer for the Association of Marine Laboratories of the Caribbean and is an Island Innovation Ambassador. Her research focusses are on coral recruitment, stony coral tissue loss disease and the impact of Sargassum beaching events on ecosystems and local communities.

In 2020, Franziska gave TEDx talk in Luzern: How a Marine Biologist Became a Climate Pirate. Since January 2020, Franziska has been on a climate change sabbatical in which she volunteers for various projects working help to solve this crisis.

Speaks About

  • My talk will focus on Sargassum, a macroalgae that became hyperabundant in the last 10 years due to climate change and agricultural runoff. I will focus on how this negatively affected the Caribbean and West Africa but also show how we could use this abundant algae to make all kinds of products and drawdown carbon. 

  • I have been active in sustainability clubs for the last 15 years and studying and teaching environmental and marine science. Schools can be powerful changemakers and are a great place to educate about climate change across curiculums as it is ecological, technical and social problem with solutions in all these sectors.  The best way to make your school more sustainable is to form a team and get to work. A great resource to follow when you are starting is the climate action challenge book and workbook (https://www.climateactionchallenge.net/book)
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Sustainable SchoolsBy eduCCate Global