Role of chemistry education in managing humanitarian challenges

Chemistry education is expected to holistically integrate science and society so that scientific and pragmatically constructed knowledge is owned and applied by learners to sustain the ecosystem and solve challenges such as excessive population growth, energy insecurity, water scarcity, poverty, inadequate housing, health challenges, and climate changes. Thus, there have been attempts to institutionalise chemical concepts and, and in recent times, drives of humanitarian actions for a sustainable world. However, the eulogised place of chemicals and the roles that they play in chemistry education and industrialisation in pursuance of a better world, have paradoxically, resulted in degradation of the environment as pollutants from laboratories and industries end up in the ecosystem and into food chains. These have consequently led to current humanitarian challenges, migration and urbanisation in limited space, and created tension and pressure that could be threatening to the well-being of humans and the world’s carrying capacity. Further repercussions could be ethnic conflicts and on a large or extreme scale, wars. How a resolution of the current situation could begin early in our educational systems would be the focus of this conversation. A pragmatic way of exposing students to real life experiences in a safe, fun-filled environment, would be presented as an integral part of everyday life, for sustainability and possible mitigation of humanitarian challenges.