1. Introduction
Climate Change (CC) is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, threatening much of the biosphere and virtually all human activities [
1]. A large number of studies have analyzed the devastating consequences produced by this phenomenon, which show the urgent need to act. Economically, losses resulting from heat stress are estimated to be several billion annually [
2]. In addition, the capacity to produce goods and products will be reduced; it has been shown that CC can reduce the working capacity to 90% in the hottest months [
3]. The consequences are not only economical, but they also affect society as a multiplicative threat. CC increases violence, general health and psychological disorders, as well as reduces the sense of well-being [
4]. Its impact is also extended into the animal kingdom by reducing animal feeding and growth rates [
5] and reducing livestock reproduction rates [
6]. These are only a few examples of the complex and broad consequences of CC for all habitants on Earth. These complex interactions of the climate with other socio-environmental problems create a planetary emergency which needs to be addressed with urgency [
7,
8]. Given these consequences, this phenomenon needs to be addressed with coordinated strategies for adaptation and mitigation at all levels, from local to global organizations. Education, in particular, should play a fundamental role in improving the resilience of the communities and helping to improve the mitigation and adaptation strategies. A considerable consensus exists [
9] on the need to consolidate education as a primary tool to mobilize society in the face of this global crisis [
10].
The role of education has been described explicitly in several international treaties and laws. For example, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) introduced by UNESCO is a comprehensive proposal to create a new generation of citizens with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to create a more sustainable world [
11]. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) introduced by the UN [
12] are another example of how education needs to be implemented to reduce and prevent the worst scenarios of CC. SDG 13, which refers to climate action, has three targets and aims. In particular, target 13.3 explains that education needs to be improved in order to reduce the impact of Climate Change through mitigation and adaptation. The Paris treaty on CC also describes the importance of education and the need to establish an emergency curriculum about CC [
13].
The scientific literature has also discussed in great lengths the need to incorporate CC into formal education. Authors such as Mochizuki and Bryan [
14] are more specific and raised the issue of Climate-Change education, which is needed in order to provide people with transversal skills and abilities that enrich their cognitive and affective domains to cope with this phenomenon. Other authors say that this task should be an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses scientific, socio-economic aspects and possible solutions [
15] to educate regarding Climate Change [
16]. Critical reviews have been dedicated to this matter wherein they compile the arguments in favor of new Climate-Change curricula and competences [
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21].
Although CC education is recognized as a fundamental tool to tackle CC by the general public, the institutions, and the experts, there is no clear strategy for implementing it effectively into the education system. The educational response to CC has been very uneven, but recent publications demonstrate a range of proposals leading to different levels of enactment and uptake [
22]. Some local authorities and some states have already presented proposals for the introduction of Climate Change in schools, but the efforts are still isolated.
We have proposed a new comprehensive alternative to achieve this goal in the form of a Climate-Change Competence (C3) [
23]. This construct joins two major branches: (a) Institutional Climate-Change response, which includes mitigation and adaptation, and (b) multidisciplinary education leading to action. The Competence has three principal dimensions:
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Knowledge. In order to understand the nature of Climate Change, it is essential to understand the basic science of this phenomenon, as well as the causes and consequences, together with the magnitude of its impact and comprehension of the multidimensional challenge.
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Abilities. An extensive set of abilities ranging from daily and local to global and complex actions must combat CC. These abilities will improve the resilience of the communities and enhance their capacity for adaptation and mitigation.
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Attitudes. These develop an awareness of the problem, which is necessary in order to act with urgency on this global issue. Present and future citizens need to coherently and responsibly mobilize with growing autonomy, judgment, and personal responsibility.
The structure of the C3 is optimal as it allows us to organize the institutional references and the contributions in the scientific literature into dimensions that are well recognized by the education community. Similar competences regarding education about sustainable development have been introduced but with the focus outside formal education. Although, among these proposals are the action competence [
24], the sustainability competence [
25], and other more specific competences such as the environmental-health competence [
26] and the environment competence [
27]; in all cases, the adaptation and mitigation of Climate Change are introduced marginally. Additionally, the focus is usually only a descriptive analysis of the dimensions [
28] and not an in-depth study of the relationships between competences or their dimensions.
In the framework of the C3, scientific knowledge is necessary to understand the complex nature of the phenomenon, the interconnections between different parts of the climate systems and how human civilization depends on climate stability and a rich biodiversity. A basic understanding of the future scenarios and the impact of human activity on the environment is also essential to understand the problem and relate it to mitigation and adaptation efforts. But knowledge alone is not enough: values, awareness, and attitudes are needed to understand the urgency of the situation and the need to act in a coherent and informed way. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, knowledge and attitudes should promote action, help to create habits, promote skills and improve the mitigation and adaptation strategies at the individual [
29], local and global levels.
This last part is the most important as the overall goal of including CC in education is to improve resilience and the abilities of mitigation and adaptation. Research into how different dimensions interact within the competence is vital to understand the most effective strategies for implementing the C3 in schools.
The dimensions of the Competence need to work together within the education system to improve our response to this phenomenon, the Competence is meant to be present through all the curriculum and in all disciplines and the goal is to mobilize the future citizens around this problem. Therefore, we need to understand the structure of the Competence and the interaction between the different dimensions to design and implement effective educational strategies to achieve the Competence goals.
Additionally, understanding the relationship between different dimensions of the Competence could help us to distinguish different profiles of students, representing different but equivalent paths of acquiring the C3. For example, we can think about the profile of a virtuous person or student who has high knowledge, high attitudes, and acts accordingly with good abilities, thereby maximizing their personal impact. While this is efficient and good, some other profiles are also needed and desired; another less virtuous but equally applicable profile is a person with basic knowledge and attitudes but high skills and efficiency in implementing mitigation and adaptation practices.
The importance of studying the relationship between dimensions of competences has been recognized in the literature. Several environmental researchers and educators have focused in recent decades on the relationship between knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, or abilities in the framework of CC. Researchers in this field explain that to act against CC, people must understand the science of this phenomenon [
30]. Therefore, the knowledge dimension has been considered an essential factor to improve the environment’s ability [
31].
Similarly, other researchers are more specific and explained that to acquire pro-environmental behaviors, the knowledge dimension needs to be integrated with three elements that include understanding (a) the importance of the human actions on natural systems, (b) the problems arising from the interactions between social systems and natural systems and (c) the recognition and evaluation of the different actions for mitigating the environmental crisis through pro-environmental actions [
32]. Other studies about the relationship between these dimensions have revealed a strong positive relationship between environmental knowledge and environmental attitudes [
33,
34]. Similarly, relationships between attitudes and abilities can occur. Attitudes are responsible for generating feelings and concern for specific environmental issues, and these feelings can cause action to solve environmental problems leading to abilities regarding these issues. For example, a study has shown a positive relationship between individuals’ attitudes and environmental behaviors [
35], where the attitudes directly and indirectly affected the pro-environmental behaviors. Another study performed on adolescents with pro-environmental attitudes and knowledge demonstrated high pro-environmental behaviors [
36]. However, to strengthen the relationship between abilities and attitudes, it is necessary to know the science of this phenomenon. To give an illustration, a study in Italy showed that the scientific knowledge of CC focused on the physics and chemistry of this phenomenon, as well as its causes and consequences, had a positive impact on the people’s daily activities, thereby helping to address Climate-Change mitigation [
37].
These studies show the importance of the interaction between different dimensions of competences and how all three of them are necessary and complementary, but a closer look at these interactions in the case of the Climate-Change Competence (C3) can help us to define effective educational strategies. Therefore, in this paper, we will analyze the mediation and moderation between the knowledge, ability, and attitude of the C3. This is the main novelty of the study.
Our two main research questions are:
RQ1: Can attitudes towards CC mediate the correlation between knowledge and ability towards CC in students?
RQ2: Can attitudes towards CC strengthen or moderate the relationship between knowledge and abilities?
These questions are essential to reveal which of the three dimensions are necessary to produce action and behaviors in front of the CC crisis.
4. Discussion
Our analyses are based on the Climate-Change Competence (C3) proposed by Ferrari-Lagos et al. [
58] and Fuertes et al. [
23] that defines a structure with three dimensions: learning to know (scientific knowledge as the physics and chemistry of CC, causes, and consequences), learning to do (CC adaptation and mitigation) and learning to be (awareness to be able to act with growing autonomy, judgment, and personal responsibility). Our correlation analysis revealed that there is a medium correlation between the dimensions of C3. Recent environmental research has reported moderate correlations between knowledge, attitude, and ability [
59], strengthening our findings. The primary objective of this paper was to analyze the relationship between the dimensions of Climate-Change Competence (C3). To fulfill this overarching goal, the analyses focused on answering two main questions: whether the attitude dimension mediates the correlation between knowledge and abilities, and whether the attitude dimension can moderate and ultimately strengthen the relationship between knowledge and ability.
Our first research question was targeted at determining if attitudes about CC have a potential role (mediator) in the relationship between knowledge and ability regarding CC. In the mediation model that we tested there was a medium effect size, which is significant. The findings presented here provide three key facts about the knowledge dimension in the C3. First, that an increase in the knowledge dimension implies an improvement in attitudes. This result is in line with other studies, such as that of Masud et al. [
60] which also found that knowledge of CC has a positive and significant impact on attitudes to CC. Similarly, Liu et al. [
61] reported that environmental knowledge has a significant positive effect on environmental attitudes. Another study found that general and specific knowledge about carbon is linked to widespread environmental attitudes [
62]. Second, our results show that attitude mediates the effect of CC knowledge on the improvement of people’s abilities. This finding is consistent with earlier studies [
60,
63], which reported an indirect effect of knowledge, awareness, and risk perception on abilities through environmental attitudes, which is significant. Likewise, Waris & Hameed [
64] found that knowledge of eco-labels and altruism have a positive influence on attitudes toward energy-efficient-purchase intention. Third, there is a direct effect of knowledge of CC on the ability to respond to this phenomenon. This result is congruent with research conducted by Busch et al. [
65] which showed that causes and consequences of CC were a direct predictor of behavior.
Our findings explain that attitudes about Climate Change yield an indirect effect on the relationship between knowledge and ability. These results could be helpful to improve the activities of mitigation through scientific knowledge of the physics and chemistry of CC and the creation of the awareness to act against CC with growing autonomy, judgment, and personal responsibility.
Our second research question was targeted to determine if attitudes strengthen the relationship between knowledge and abilities. To answer this question, we applied an analysis of moderation, wherein attitude worked as a moderating variable. The findings, again, pointed to three important facts. First, that knowledge of CC is a predictor of the ability to address it. According to Levine & Strube [
66] and Kuhlemeier et al. [
67], knowledge increases the ability to be more responsible with the environment. Second, there is a positive significant relationship between knowledge of CC and attitudes toward this phenomenon. Our result is supported by Higde et al. [
68]; they found that values and attitudes around CC are essential determinants of abilities. Third, surprisingly, our findings suggest that attitudes do not moderate the relationship between knowledge and abilities. This result implies that the relationship between knowledge and ability remains unchanged, regardless of the level of attitudes of the person. In contrast with the studies that used the dimensions of competences as moderating variables, which are a majority of those referenced, we used knowledge as a moderating variable in the relationship between attitudes and abilities [
69,
70,
71,
72]. Therefore, we found no studies to support our results, and more research is needed in this field. However, one study showed that environmental awareness is a moderating variable between attitudes and behaviors [
73].