When we talk about solving the climate crisis, or biodiversity loss, or deforestation, or plastic choking our rivers, the names that come up are usually the same ones. Governments. Scientists. Corporations. Policymakers. Big institutions with big budgets and long acronyms. And yes, all of that matters. But there’s a group we keep leaving out of that conversation, and honestly, it bothers me every time I notice it.
Children.
The decisions we’re making right now, today, will be the world our kids inherit. That’s not a metaphor. That’s just true. And if we’re serious about a sustainable future, we can’t just build better solar panels and pass better legislation. We have to raise people who actually care. That starts earlier than most of us think.
Why Environmental Education Matters
Kids are curious in a way that adults have mostly forgotten how to be. They want to know why the sky turns orange at dusk, why some trees lose their leaves and others don’t, and where the rain goes after it soaks into the ground. That kind of wonder is not something you have to manufacture. It’s already there.
Those early years are a genuine opening. When children encounter nature and conservation before the world has taught them to feel overwhelmed or cynical, something sticks. Not just facts. Values. A sense that the natural world is worth paying attention to, worth protecting.
Kids who grow up with that kind of grounding tend to carry it forward. They develop respect for ecosystems. They understand, really understand, not just recite, why natural resources matter. They build habits that last. And eventually, they become the kind of adults who actually care about their communities and the world beyond their front door.
Environmental education isn’t just content delivery. It’s about helping a child feel that they belong to something larger than themselves and that what they do matters.
The Challenge of Talking About Climate Change
Here’s the honest difficulty: climate change is real, urgent, and complicated. And explaining it to a six-year-old is hard.
The scientific literature wasn’t written for children. Terms like “climate adaptation” and “carbon footprint” don’t exactly spark wonder in a first-grader. And yet children are already hearing about climate change. From the news their parents watch, from conversations at school, sometimes from a fear they can’t quite name when they see images of flooding or wildfire on a screen.
So what do you do with that? You can’t pretend the problems don’t exist. But you also can’t hand a child a burden without also handing them some sense of possibility.
That’s the balance I kept thinking about. Children need honesty. They also need hope. And they need to see themselves somewhere in the story, not as victims of what adults have done, but as people who can actually do something.
Why I Wrote The Great Green Earth
Conservation has always mattered to me. But for a long time, if I’m being honest, it lived mostly in my head. I felt it, believed in it, talked about it. I just hadn’t done anything about it.
What changed that was a moment I didn’t see coming.
We were in an Uber, my family and I, caught in the usual Nairobi traffic, when our nanny casually tossed a banana peel out the window. My children saw it happen. The way they turned to me, almost indignant, tripping over each other to report what they’d just witnessed, was something I wasn’t prepared for. The urgency in their voices and the genuine offence they took.
That moment stayed with me.
I started thinking, what if more children carried that same fire? That instinctive sense that something was wrong, that it mattered, that someone needed to know? I’m not suggesting other kids don’t care. But I also know my children didn’t arrive at those values by accident. We planted them over the years through the things we talked about at home, the habits we modelled, the way we framed the world around us.
That’s what pushed me to finally write the book. Not just the passion I’d been sitting on for years, but the realization that these values can be taught and that the earlier we start, the deeper they take root.
Excerpt from The Great Green Earth
The following excerpt is adapted from The Great Green Earth.
Once, there was an awesome, great, and beautiful planet called Earth. Earth was home to many living creatures, including animals of all kinds. It had forests, oceans, rivers, and wonderful places where people and wildlife lived together. Earth was a happy place, and everyone who lived on it loved it.
One day, however, something began to feel different. The air became warmer, and the weather started to change. Some days were unusually hot, while others were unexpectedly cold. The ice at the North and South Poles began to melt, causing ocean levels to rise. Sadly, some of the places where animals lived were covered by water.
The people of Earth became concerned. They knew that something was happening to their beautiful planet, but they did not know what was causing it or how to fix it.
Then a group of determined scientists made an important discovery. They explained that the Earth was becoming hotter because of something called climate change.
The scientists told people that climate change was largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are the remains of ancient plants and animals that help power our cars, homes, and industries. When these fuels are burned, they release gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. These gases trap heat from the sun, causing the Earth to become warmer.
The scientists also explained that cutting down trees and certain farming activities contribute to climate change.
The people were surprised. They had not realised that some of their everyday actions were harming the planet they loved so much.
Determined to make a difference, they created a plan……….
Encouraging Conversations Beyond the Page
There are concepts in The Great Green Earth, things like climate change, clean energy, and recycling, that I deliberately didn’t explain in full technical detail. Some people might read it and think I left things out. I did. On purpose.
I wanted to leave room. When a child comes across something unfamiliar in the book and turns to a parent or a teacher or an older sibling and asks, “What does that mean?” that moment is the point. That question is the whole thing. The book is meant to open a door, not close one.
Some of the most meaningful learning I’ve witnessed doesn’t happen during a lesson. It happens in the car on the way home from school. At the dinner table. While you’re planting something together. Late at night when a kid won’t go to sleep because they’re still turning something over in their mind. The Great Green Earth is designed to generate those moments. It’s the beginning of a dialogue, not the end of one.
From Awareness to Action
One thing I feel strongly about, and I try to get this across in the book, is that you don’t have to be an adult to make a difference. Children don’t have to wait.
Planting a tree is real. Picking up litter is real. Turning off a tap, asking a parent why a certain product comes wrapped in so much plastic. All of it counts. Small actions compound. Habits formed young tend to last.
Parents and caregivers matter enormously here too. There’s something that happens when a family does this kind of thing together. A community clean-up, a tree planted in the backyard, or even just a conversation about why a certain river looks different than it used to. A child who experiences that doesn’t forget it. I certainly haven’t forgotten mine.
Environmental education is the foundation for progress.
Building a Culture of Stewardship
Policies matter. Technology matters. But neither sustains itself without a culture that genuinely values the natural world.
A child who grows up understanding environmental responsibility, who has internalized it and not just memorized it, is more likely to become an adult who votes for conservation, makes different choices at the supermarket, and raises their own children with those values. The return on that investment compounds in ways that are almost impossible to measure.
That’s why I think environmental education deserves to be treated as seriously as any other subject. Not as a feel-good add-on, but as something foundational. Every child who falls in love with nature is a potential advocate. And right now, the world needs as many of those as it can get.
Looking Ahead
The response to The Great Green Earth has genuinely surprised me. Not because I doubted the idea, but because you never quite know how something will land until it does. People have connected with it in ways I didn’t anticipate, and that’s reinforced something I already believed: this kind of work matters, and it matters early.
The project has grown in directions I didn’t initially plan for. Through a connection I’m still a little amazed by, volunteers from Climate Cardinals, a global youth-led nonprofit dedicated to making climate information accessible across languages, have completed translations of the book into French, German, and Spanish. Those editions are expected to be published in the coming months.
I think about what that means. A child in Senegal reading about conservation in French. A child in Mexico encountering these ideas in Spanish. The problems we’re facing don’t respect borders, and neither should the education we’re trying to provide.
Conclusion
The future of this planet will be shaped by the values we pass on, not just the policies we pass. Our children are not simply going to inherit what we leave behind. They’re going to decide what to do with it.
Environmental education gives them the tools to do that. It helps them feel connected to the natural world rather than alienated from it. It gives them agency, the sense that they are participants in what happens next, not bystanders.
That journey begins differently for every child.
Sometimes it begins with a lesson. Sometimes with an experience, a forest walk, a river, a sky full of birds. And sometimes, it begins with a story.
