What’s the ambiental education?

We explain what environmental education is and what its functions and objectives are. Also, what tools do you use to achieve them.

1. What’s the ambiental education?

Environmental education is the programmatic training of individuals aware and responsible for their ecological environment , equipped with the knowledge , skills and attitudes necessary to understand and solve the environmental problems of their community.

It is the main mechanism available in society to form generations that are more respectful of the enormous natural heritage of planet Earth , that is, of its biological diversity , and more efficient in its modes of consumption. It emerged from the environmental and sustainability warnings that, since 1960, have emerged from different perspectives and communities.

To do this, environmental education is based on the idea of incorporating content relevant to environmental preservation and responsible consumption into formal and official educational programs . In addition, additional training plans that facilitate ecological awareness work can be offered.

These tasks can be carried out by governmental, private or independent authorities.

2. Functions of environmental education

Environmental education has a unique and key function: to sensitize the population regarding the necessary environmental awareness . With the transmission of knowledge and ecological perspectives to future generations, a sustainable and ecologically respectful perspective can be guaranteed in their worldviews.

Ultimately, the purpose of this education is to preserve our planet and its delicate biotic balances , thus guaranteeing us as much as possible the only home of life as we know it.

3. Objectives of environmental education

As established in the Belgrano Charter of 1975, the objectives of environmental education must be:

• Provide the population with greater sensitivity and awareness regarding environmental care.
• Encourage total understanding of the environment as a system , together with its contexts, related problems and critical responsibility for the presence of humanity in it.
• Deepen social and ecological values .
• Help produce the necessary responses to solve environmental dilemmas.
• Promote the mechanisms for evaluating measures and programs of the environmental education itself, depending on the political, social and economic characteristics, etc., of the local population.
• Promote environmentally responsible attitudes and active and urgent participation in the debate on the environment.
• Induce responsible consumption and the adoption of respectful habits towards nature .
• Distinguish and recognize the causes of the world’s main ecological problems.
• Recognize the importance of the impact of different human economic models on nature.

4. Environmental education tools

Environmental education has numerous tools and strategies, of which the educator himself is the most important . Their commitment to the moral, intellectual and emotional formation of the students accompanies the environmental content: they will be the main integrators between the individual behavior of the student and the known environmental problems .

In the same way, today’s multimedia are an unavoidable resource in this type of training. The film (and especially documentaries complaint) usually have a high impact on the sensitivity of young people and music, advertising , or field trip activities.

5. Importance of environmental education

Environmental education is, in the long run, the only really effective tool to preserve the planet from the consequences of human activity .

No other measure will be as fundamental as the formation in this type of values and responsibilities of the coming generations, who will be in charge of making decisions in due course. It could be said that it is the strongest commitment to the ecological future of our species and our planet.