Climate change education in Brazil: policy architecture, pedagogical innovation, and the challenge of systemic coherence

Brazil has one of the world’s most developed legal architectures for environmental governance and recognizes environmental education as a constitutional duty. Yet climate change education (CCE) remains uneven in curricular presence and classroom enactment across a vast, unequal, and politically contested federation. Hosting the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belém in November 2025 created political momentum for reform, even as the federal government expanded oil exploration on the Equatorial Margin. This review synthesizes Brazilian policy instruments and recent research across basic education, teacher education, higher education, and non-formal and community learning. We argue that Brazil’s CCE landscape is characterized by (a) strong environmental education mandates and expanding subnational and civil society initiatives; (b) growing evidence of effective, locally contextualized pedagogies, including project-based learning, citizen science, and climate justice education; and (c) persistent implementation constraints, especially insufficient teacher education, scarce Portuguese-language resources, and fragmented signals within the national curriculum framework (BNCC). Original analysis of subnational assessment frameworks and 2025 diagnostic assessment data shows that climate-relevant competencies are not reliably translated into test instruments. These dynamics risk a ‘low climate learning trap’ in which climate change is acknowledged but marginal. Drawing on Brazilian critical environmental education, we argue that coherence must be oriented toward the structural drivers of the crisis, not only adaptation to its effects. We conclude with six recommendations to align curriculum, assessment, teacher education, and whole-school approaches, while centering Brazil’s biomes and Indigenous and traditional knowledges.