<mark>structure from developing to developed countries in the European Union (EU) relate to carbon emissions. They find that carbon emissions increase initially as countries move from agriculture to manufacturing, but a rising share of the service sector and increasing per capita incomes leads</mark> to reduced emissions, thus confirming the U-shaped curve.

<mark>A more recent paper by Mrabet et al. (2021) uses panel data for 16 Middle Eastern and North African countries (period 1990–2016) to examine the relationship between Ecological Footprint and HDI. They find that improving HDI will harm the environment in the early stages of development by increasing the Ecological Footprint, but as the country develops, further increases in human development will result in lower levels of environmental degradation. These findings thus suggest that human development and political stability can have a positive effect on the environment through better education and health care systems. However, validating these</mark> mechanisms and establishing a causal relationship still requires further research.

<mark>The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. The next section presents a synthesis of literature to establish that climate change can indeed affect human development outcomes. It also presents an overview of the adaptation and mitigation measures that can reduce the negative impact of climate change. While some interventions, such as risk assessment of buildings and disaster management, can aid adaptation and reduce climate vulnerabilities, others, such as curriculum redesign and promoting research in universities, can enable mitigation. The last section then shifts focus to the literature on the linkages between education and climate change and presents a possible framework to study these linkages. The last part of that section also presents compulsory</mark> schooling laws as one instrument that can be used to establish causal linkages.

# **2. Impact of Climate on Human Development**

<mark>The influence of our physical environment and climate on human development outcomes such as educational attainment and child mortality has been studied by researchers in different contexts and regions of the world. While weather changes can directly affect human development outcomes by disrupting access to infrastructure such as schools or hospitals, availability of staff (teachers, doctors and nurses, etc.), and increasing incidence of diseases, research in countries across the globe has shown that changes in weather patterns can also affect cognitive performance, rate of skill formation, work behavior, workforce migration, and labor market participation (see Deuster 2021; Das 2020; Li 2020; Zivin and Neidell 2014). Park et al. (2021) use data for 58 countries and 12,000 US school districts with detailed weather and academic calendar information to show that the rate of learning decreases with an increase in the number of hot school days. These negative effects are further compounded in poorer countries and can be up to three times higher for students from low-income groups. Zivin et al. (2018) in their study further show that even though the negative effect of long-term temperature changes may be reduced due to compensatory behavior, short-run changes can lead to statistically significant decreases in cognitive performance (also see</mark> Zivin et al. 2020).

<mark>A similar study by Cook (2021) using the difference-in-difference methodology to assess the impact of flooding on education outcomes and cognitive performance among school children in Canada finds that exposure to floods can reduce performance by up to 7 percent of a standard</mark> <mark>3</mark>