Creating an environment to educate about the environment
- Getting EE right:
- Defining Environmental Education
- Real Environmental Action
- EE has always been here
- The Modern Impetus for EE
- The Easy Question: "So What?"
- Visions, Aims and Objectives of EE
- Strategies and Working Frameworks
- Implications of the SDGs
- Resources within the GDRC
Section 1 |
Getting EE right |
Defining Environmental Education
Environmental Education (EE) is a process in which individuals gain awareness of their environment and acquire knowledge, skills, values, experiences, and also the determination, which will enable them to act - individually and collectively - to solve present and future environmental problems.
EE is a complex process, covering not just events, but a strong underlying approach to society building as a whole. EE provides people with the awareness needed to build partnerships, understand NGO activities, develop participatory approaches to urban planning, and ensure future markets for eco-business.
Environmental education is a learning process that increases peoples knowledge and awareness about the environment and associated challenges, develops the necessary skills and expertise to address the challenges, and fosters attitudes, motivations, and commitments to make informed decisions and take responsible action (UNESCO, Tbilisi Declaration, 1978).
Environmental education enhances critical thinking, problem-solving, and effective decision-making skills, and teaches individuals to weigh various sides of an environmental issue to make informed and responsible decisions. Environmental education does not advocate a particular viewpoint or course of action.
The components of environmental education are:
- Awareness and sensitivity to the environment and environmental challenges
- Knowledge and understanding of the environment and environmental challenges
- Attitudes of concern for the environment and motivation to improve or maintain environmental quality
- Skills to identify and help resolve environmental challenges
- Participation in activities that lead to the resolution of environmental challenges
Environmental education is aimed at producing a citizenry that is knowledgeable concerning the biophysical environment and its associated problems, aware of how to help solve these problems, and motivated to work toward their solution.
Stapp, W.B., et al. (1969). The Concept of Environmental Education. Journal of Environmental Education, 1(1), 30-31.
Environmental education, properly understood, should constitute a comprehensive lifelong education, one responsive to changes in a rapidly changing world. It should prepare the individual for life through an understanding of the major problems of the contemporary world, and the provision of skills and attributes needed to play a productive role towards improving life and protecting the environment with due regard given to ethical values.
UNESCO, 1977
Real Environmental Action
Real environmental action is local - at the micro level, reflecting the problems and capacity of individuals and groups ...'Environment' means different things to different people. For some, it means separating the garbage into burnable and non-burnable items. To others it means saving on electricity or using less water. The term 'environment' may be associated with restoring the vitality of tropical rain forests, maintaining biodiversity and arresting desertification. Developing healthy, sustainable and safe communities becomes important to yet others.
The environment also means agricultural and industrial production that is sound and 'green'. Some associate man-made chemical and nuclear hazards with concrete environmental policies.
All of these views are right in their own way, and are united in its concern for the effects that the environment has on the day-to-day lives of current and future generations.
EE has always been here
People have always lived symbiotically with nature, and built stories, religions and cultures around nature and the local environment ...Critical to an historical understanding of the environment is the definition of 'God' itself. Many ancient religions and beliefs invariably created 'Gods' and other Supreme Beings out of natural phenomena such as the sun, moon, stars, planets, and also from rivers, mountains, oceans, trees, and other animals.
This respect and 'fear' of inexplicable natural happenings and human dependence on it (for example, dependence on rain for a healthy harvest) - has had an influence on the relationship between hamns and nature. Whole mountain systems or rivers were made sacred and reverenced as Gods so that it could be protected from human exploitation.
It is significant that assigning merit to natural phenomena also brought about value systems that respected and fostered the environment.
The Modern Impetus for EE
Much of the modern impetus for comprehensive and holistic environmental education comes from Agenda 21, adopted at the Rio Conference in 1992.Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 PROMOTING EDUCATION, PUBLIC AWARENESS AND TRAININGEspecifically calls for reorienting education towards sustainable development; increasing public awareness; and promoting training ...
FULL TEXT: Agenda21, Chapter 36
Other statements and declarations on environmental education:
The Easy Question: "So What?"
Like the environment itself, environmental education is complex, requiring multi-info applied at multi-levels, using multi-media, and targeting multi-stakeholders. Every potential decision that has an environmental impact - whether drinking a cup of water at the micro level, or targets for global CO2 reductions - has an element of education and awareness-building built into it. In order to draw out and distil the essence of environmental education, we can condense the whole process into a single question that, in fact, contains just two words: SO WHAT?But this is not the confrontational question "So what??!" that demands justifications. Instead it is the short form of three essential questions that start with 'So What'.
These three questions around which much of environmental education activities revolve, are:
1. So what is happening?
2. So what does this mean to me?
3. So what can I do?
- So what is happening?
- This is the 'so-what' question that begins the quest for action. What is happening to the environment around us? Who is doing all those bad things to the environment? The environment around us may be green, but what are the real problems (and problems behind the problems). This is the awareness stage ...
- So what does this mean to me?
- How does the changing environment affect us? Positively? Negatively? What is the relationships - cause-and-effect - between the environment and humans? It is this reflective stage, of understanding the cyclical impacts of human activities on the environment, and vice-versa on human health.
- So what do I do?
- This is the stage where actual action takes place, where small daily actions cumulatively have positive impacts at the global level.
And still the two word question remains, 'So what?'
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