SECAP School action-research initiative Lombardy, Monza and Desio; 1,200+ students engaged in local climate action

SECAP School – From Learners to Climate Actors

SECAP School is an action-research initiative led by the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (INDIRE), developed in collaboration with EuCliPa.IT, the Italian network of European Climate Pact Ambassadors, and, for the 2026–27 cycle, with the Politecnico di Torino, with the contribution of the Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe (EPALE) and the Italian Network for Adult Education (RIDAP). The project connects climate education with local climate governance through Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs), while extending the approach to adult education, lifelong learning and broader territorial communities.

The project starts from a simple idea: schools should not be only recipients of climate policies. They can become active territorial actors, capable of understanding local vulnerabilities, developing solutions and entering into dialogue with public administrations.

Teachers and students work on real climate challenges around their schools and neighbourhoods. They analyse heat, lack of green areas, soil sealing, biodiversity, public space and other local vulnerabilities; identify possible Nature-based Solutions; co-design proposals; and bring them into dialogue with municipalities and local stakeholders.

The approach combines place-based, project-based and experiential learning, civic education, sustainability competences and participatory planning. Students move from climate awareness to climate agency , experiencing climate action as a collective process.

More than 1,200 students have participated in SECAP School, engaging with their schools and territories not simply as places to be studied, but as living environments of which they are part. By overcoming the traditional separation between humans and nature, the project seeks to strengthen students’ environmental identity, sense of belonging and capacity to care for and transform their places. In this sense, SECAP School moves towards a pedagogy of “Reconcilism” (Mansion, 2022) based on a double reconciliation: first, helping students recognise themselves as biologically embedded in the living world; second, reconnecting cognitive understanding with sensory and embodied experience. By combining knowledge, perception and direct engagement with places, the project seeks to strengthen environmental identity and a deeper sense of belonging to the living systems students inhabit.

On the research side, SECAP School extends the European concept of double materiality—formalised through the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD, Directive (EU) 2022

and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS, 2023) —to education as “Educational Double Materiality” (de Maurissens, 2025). This lens reads the school–territory relationship in two directions: outside-in, how climatic, environmental and social conditions shape educational experience; and inside-out, how schools, through learning, co-design and civic action, can in turn generate effects on their territories and communities.

Concrete experiences have already been developed in Lombardy, Northern Italy, in Monza—one of the most densely populated cities in Italy—and Desio. Students analysed local climate vulnerabilities and developed Nature-based Solution proposals for public spaces. In Desio, two city squares will be co-designed with the municipal administration starting from the students’ proposals, turning their work into a concrete process of civic participation and territorial transformation.

The project continues in 2026–27 with the theme “The school as a climate shelter”, strengthening collaboration among schools, local authorities, research institutions, European Climate Pact actors, EPALE and the RIDAP network. The new cycle explores how school and learning spaces can contribute to climate adaptation, well-being and community resilience through Nature-based Solutions, co-design and intergenerational participation.

SECAP School does not stop at learning about climate change: it creates a pathway through which educational capacity can enter local climate action. By linking environmental justice, students’ environmental identity and collective agency, the project seeks to overcome the separation between people, nature and place. Through the lenses of Reconcilism (Mansion, 2022) and Educational Double Materiality (de Maurissens, 2025), schools are understood both as places shaped by climatic, social and environmental inequalities and as actors capable of transforming their territories. Climate education thus becomes not only a matter of knowledge, but of belonging, care, justice and shared responsibility.

Scuola Democratica 2026 presentation: SECAP School, Nature-based Solutions and climate adaptation in schools 1.81 MB

Scuola Democratica 2026 presentation: SECAP School, Nature-based Solutions and climate adaptation in schools

SECAP School – From Learners to Climate Actors

2.1 | Education for Climate priority

develop green skills and competences

SDG (11) Sustainable Cities and Communities

2.4 | GreenComp: sustainability competence focus

4.2 Collective action (Acting for Sustainability)

2.6 | related EU initiative

4.2 | community peer review

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