Current status of education for fostering climate change experts: Focusing on the graduate school curriculum of government-funded research institutes

The importance of fostering climate change experts is emphasized in international agreements like UNFCCC and SDGs, as well as in domestic legislation such as Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth for Coping with Climate Crisis and Act on Promotion of Technology Development for Coping with Climate Change. Also, it is important for climate change experts who can immediately engage in research and industries to contribute to climate change response and cooperation. In this respect, this research analyzed the graduate school curriculum of government-funded research institutes (University of Science and Technology, "UST") based on the climate technology classification and the Keywords of Article 2 of Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth for Coping with Climate Crisis. The UST curriculum related to climate change was classified into three fields: technology, policy, and international cooperation. Most of the UST curriculum belonged to the technology field(90.4%), with climate change mitigation technologies being dominant(67.7% of the technology field), such as power storage, photovoltaic power, and fuel cells. Policy-related curricula mainly focused on studying policy trends, while curricula on designing policy for climate change response were insufficient. Additionally, the field of international cooperation comprised only 0.6%, or 1 out of 167, curricula. Furthermore, similar courses were offered at several institutions. Therefore, not only mitigation, but also adaptation and convergence technology should be considered together as the curriculum for climate change response technology. In addition, the curriculum in the fields of policy and international cooperation should be expanded, and it is important to foster experts with integrated knowledge in the fields of technology, policy, and international cooperation.