Environmental Education

Environmental education projects are common nowadays and are also an integral part of many nature protection projects. But what are we actually talking about, and why is environmental education so necessary?

What Is Environmental Education?

Environmental education may best be defined as a process directed at creating awareness and understanding about environmental issues that leads to responsible individual and group actions. Successful environmental education focuses on processes that promote critical thinking, problem solving, and effective decision-making skills. Environmental education utilizes processes that involve students in observing, measuring, classifying, experimenting, and other data gathering techniques. These processes assist students in discussing, inferring, predicting, and interpreting data about environmental issues.

A little bit of history…

In the 1960s, awareness of the negative impacts of mankind on the natural environment rose, and environmental policies and programmes worldwide were developed. People became more aware of their own impact on the environment in their everyday life and, in parallel, their influence on the way their local community is run. The idea emerged that a citizen could influence public decisions that impact ones quality of life (at least in democratic countries). That is when the need for environmental education emerged, covering two aspects: inform people of environmental systems and educate them so that they adopt a more responsible attitude towards the environment. The idea was not to dictate how to behave but to help people make informed choices.

During the 1970s, a great effort was made to put environmental education higher on the agenda, to define its scope, to state clearly some quality measures and guidelines, and by all this to promote environmental education as an essential part of the multi-faceted solutions to environmental problems produced by mankind.

Diversity In Environmental Education

Nowadays, environmental education is sometimes integrated into school curricula as an interdisciplinary goal of formal education. It is also part of informal education, and a part of daily life during leisure time activities, as well as a substitute for or extension to the formal education sector.

Environmental education is about experiencing, sharing, creativity, pleasure and sensitivity: environmental education activities can be informing the population, discovery activities, but can also consists of the active participation of the public (workshops, volunteering, excursions, role play, field trips or holidays). The public sector, as well as NGOs, provides materials, education and guidelines on environmental education. Protected Areas also play a vital role in environmental education in regions, having the scientific and protection issues at hand and being able to transfer the knowledge using participation opportunities to a broad public.

Education for sustainable development, became more and more important at the beginning of the 21st century and can be viewed as a broadening and strengthening of environmental education. It takes into account not only the education about ecology and how to protect naturally functioning environments, but also the social, democratic, cultural and economic wellbeing of humans in these environments. It aims at enabling people to enforce and support sustainable development in their regions and globally

Our Goal Towards Environmental Education

  • To promote the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources by promoting education and awareness that incorporates issues of ecological sustainability and social equity.
  • To develop and implement innovative, locale-specific educational programmes and materials for conservation education.
  • To raise awareness and sensitize children on environment to lead to action.