Environmental Education: A Step Forward
Author: Mohammed Sanusi
Edited by: Anisere Temitope
Environmental education could be an enlightenment strategy that enables people to explore environmental problems, have interaction in problem resolution, and take action to enhance the environment. As a result, people develop a deeper understanding of environmental issues and engage their ability to make wise and responsible decisions, afterward.
Why Environmental Education as an Entity?
The issues surrounding climate change and ecological sustainability have taken a turn that seems quite drastic; no attention channeled towards addressing them can be considered too much. Unlike traditional kinds of education, environmental education could be a holistic, long learning method directed at making people environmentally responsible, and with a yearning to assess and determine environmental problems, seek out solutions, and take action to enhance the environment, effectively.
Main Objectives of Environmental Education
Creation of awareness — to create awareness in individuals and social groups, encouraging sensitivity towards the environment as a whole, and be informed on the problems, queries, and issues associated with the environment and sustainable development.
Impacting knowledge — to assist people, groups, and societies gain a variety of expertise in, and acquire a basic understanding of what’s needed to make and maintain a sustainable environment.
Influence attitudes — to assist people, groups, and societies acquire a collection of values and feelings of concern for the environment and be motivated to participate in the protection of the environment proactively.
Skill facilitation — Organization of training for individuals, social groups and societies in the acquisition of the abilities for distinguishing, anticipating, preventing and solving environmental issues.
Encourage proactive participation — to supply people, groups, and societies with a chance and also the motivation to be actively concerned at all levels in making a sustainable environment.
Importance of Environmental Education
Environmental Education is vital; as a result of its need to provide people with education that helps them become the environmental sustainability proponents. It also means supporting academics and caregivers as they engage their youngsters in outdoor studies while tackling environmental problems.
Environmental Education encourages individuals to use energy and water more expeditiously and recycle household waste. By increasing awareness and concern, education will encourage people to cut back their impact on the environment through additional economical use of energy and water supplies, particularly during resource scarcity.
WHAT WE CAN DO AS INDIVIDUALS!
• It’s up to everyone to do their best to assist, sustain and defend the environment. Any time you; scale back the quantity of water you use, cut back on the use of hydrocarbon emitters and products, scale back the utilization of electricity, stop things from going into landfills or save on natural resources, you take a step that facilitates and improves the health of the environment.
• Don’t sweep dirt and chemical from sidewalks into drains.
• Soil test before you fertilize and also use pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and other alternative field and garden chemicals, sparingly.
• Reduce automobile emissions.
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle used oil. Deliver used oil to a utilization location and also dispose of risky chemicals properly. Don’t dump down the drain, indoors, or outdoors.
• Use reusable water bottles, not single-use disposables.
• To take care of our bodies, we tend to eat well, exercise and ensure to get enough sleep — as a way of improving our internal environment. The environment that surrounds us — the air, soil, water, and ecosystems — is equally necessary for our health and the health and well-being of others.
• Other tips that boost environmentalism, in class and within the workplace embody natural gardening practices, preserving water and correct waste disposal and utilization.
CONCLUSION
Everyone, from the government to the masses (of all age brackets) with various skills in various socio-economic class, will play a vital role as stewards of the environment. At REES Africa, several dedicated volunteers have endeavored to create a significant impact in protecting and enhancing environmentally significant activities throughout the country.
The sustainability of our environment is directly linked to how enlightened, educated and exposed we are about our physical and immediate environment. And according to the French president Mr. Macron “we have no planet B,” therefore as individuals let us unite in this bid to sustain and maintain our gradually diminishing and degrading environment, it begins with YOU.
