ABSTRACT

The title of this research thesis was about the effects of climate change on students’ academic
performance in geography of secondary schools in RUBAVU District by taking G.S BIHE as the
case study . In the research, both general and specific research objective were used whereby
the main objective of this study is to identify the effect of climate change on students’
performance in RUBAVU District and the specific objective were the followings: To identify
potential causes of climate change in RUBAVU District, to assess the key indicators off student’
academic performance, to find out the relationship between learning climates and students’
performance. This research adopted the descriptive design due to its relevancy in the
description of respondents’ opinions. The whole population was 883 people. These include 18
teachers and 864 students, as well as 33 staff administrative members, the study was
comprised three stratums, the first was comprised the students, the second stratum was
comprised the teaching staff and the third was also comprised staff members. The research
used both simple random sampling which was used to select respondents from 441 students,
the purposive sampling was applied to choose 42 teachers, 1head of studies and 1 school
respective. The primary and secondary data sources were used. Both validity and reliability to
test the data quality control. Table 9 indicated that rainfall was at 15.85%. The earthquake was
at 14.63%. The volcanic eruption at 3.61%. Table 10 indicated that the attendance rate and this
was at 28.04%, the students’ achievement was at 26.82%, the discipline referrals was at
18.29%, the teaches satisfaction was also shown at 10.97%.
 LIST OF ABBREVIATION AND ACRONYMS

A; level: advance level

AASA: Atheist agnostic students association

ACT: American college test

B.C: Before Christ

CH4: Methane

CO: Carbon monoxide

CO: Carbon dioxide

DRC: Democratic republic of congo

EDPRS: Economic development and poverty reduction strategy

 CHAPTER ONE: GENERL INTRODUCTION

1.0. INTRODUCTION

This introduction comprises background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of
the study, research questions, significance of study limitation of the study, scope of the study.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may
be natural, but since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change,
primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels( like coal, oil and gas) which produces heat trapping
gases. The global climate is the connected system of sun, earth and oceans, wind, rain and snow,
forests, deserts and savannas and everything people do, too. The climate of a place can be
described as its rainfall, changing temperatures during the year ( durantion, 2016) Globally, the
environmental sustainability was the main target plants and trees play an important role in
regulating the climate because they absorb carbon dioxide from the air and release oxygen back
into it whereby forest and bush land act as carbon sinks and are a valuable means of keeping
global warning to 1.5o c. But humans clear vast areas of vegetation around the world for farming,
urban and infrastructure development or to sell tree products such as timber and palm oil. When
vegetation is removed or burnt, the stored carbon is released into the atmosphere as co 2,
contribution to global warning.

Several studies such as ( Yildirim,2017) revealed that the increase in the consumption of energy is
becoming a threat to the global ecosystem. This has given rise more prolonged droughts, rising
sea levels and the rising occurrence of heat waves, which are of grave negative impacts on the
environment. Although there is an awareness about the consequence of human activities,
( Uny,2015) observed that there is a rise in the emission level of greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide ( co2) into the atmosphere. Likewise, the need for economic growth has led to
environmental degradation, which is often a resultant effect of development and industrialization
in both developing and developed countries. The economic growth of any country is dependent
on different factors, which may impose negative impacts on the environment such as
unsustainable natural resource exploitation, environmental pollution and climate change
( phimphanaathavong,2013) also, the rapid increase in urbanization in many countries has fast-
tracked economic growth with the resultant effect of an increase in energy consumption hence,