ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION: CHOOSING BETWEEN COMMITMENT AND PAYING LIP SERVICE

Dr. Paul Pace

In these last few years, finding effective ways of resolving local environmental problems has become a regular feature in the media. I can still recall a time when mention of environmental issues was shelved as deranged obsessions of a bunch of confused quasi-hippie environmentalists. Nowadays, environmental issues have become an established item (or headache) in the political agenda and are demanding the attention of any development plan. However, there is a danger that in the quest to find immediate solutions to age-old environmental issues we might be attracted to adopt short-term actions that whitewash over problems and may give us a false feeling of success and wellbeing.

An ineffective strategy
A possible solution
How can we proceed?
References


An ineffective strategy
Although there are notable exceptions, as a general rule most of the environmental initiatives organised by governmental and non-governmental bodies tend to be sporadic, isolated with short-term goals ... that improve the chances of getting funding. A lot of effort is spent on the organisation of an initiative, but this momentum gradually grinds to a halt once the activity is launched and the necessary media coverage is ensured. Serious monitoring and evaluation of the implementation to establish whether the original objectives were met or not in order to learn from the experience are usually lacking. As a result, progress in the environmental education field is characterised by a series of jump-starts and hiccups. A classical example is the host of cleanup campaigns that are organised throughout the year. Yes, these campaigns are surely an effective way of rapidly clearing areas from unsightly rubbish, but are we aware that we are cleaning up the very same areas year in year out? How effective is this campaign in generating a nation wide concern against waste tipping?
Another strategy to safeguard the environment has been the institution of environmental laws and ways to enforce them. Legislation may be an important component in ensuring environmental protection, however promoting it as the sole component is definitely counterproductive as it reinforces the wrong concept that environmental issues are a government's concern. Moreover, experience has shown that such a strategy inevitably leads to an endless legal chase to track down and close loopholes in the legislation. Legalisms seem to encourage people who profit from environmental degradation to discover ways of circumventing the law and continue unabated with their plans ... as long as they can get away with it.
The provision of scientific information and data on the environment and its related problems has been considered as an important step in boosting public environmental awareness. Although it is imperative that up-to-date scientific information on the state of our environment is available we must be on the lookout to avoid two major related pitfalls of this strategy.
Providing more information is NOT enough. The development of environmental values is not an automatic natural consequence of an increased environmental awareness. In today's world of information transfer most of the people are already aware of the environmental impact of their actions ... otherwise why do certain "developers" seek to white wash their projects as environmentally enhancing or try to put other values on top of environmental ones? Cases in point are the proposals tabled during the Millennium Project Craze that hit our islands some time ago.
In order to be of any use environmental information has to be presented in a way that can be consumed by the public. Technical terminology, complicated tables and fancy charts may serve to provide valuable information for researchers, but useless in informing citizens whose day-to day decisions determine the state of our environment. Moreover, if this issue is not addressed, it might generate (or rather nurture) a two tiered society comprised of the experts who know it all, and the commoners who are expected to accept the dictates of the former. Unfortunately a large part of local environmental initiatives, including environmental legislation, follow this type of implementation strategy resulting either in the imposition of patterns of behaviour on an uninformed and hence uncooperative public, or in conflicts over infringed rights or in both (Pace 1996).

A possible solution
Environmental education is frequently cited as a necessary measure to counter the wave of environmental degradation (Foundation for International Studies, 1991). There was a time, particularly during the 60s, when the target of environmental education was that of achieving environmental awareness (Pace, 1997). However, the goal of environmental education has evolved to that of fostering environmental responsibility, enabling people to adopt sustainable lifestyles based on day-to-day decisions aimed at promoting a balance between quality of life and quality of the environment. Sustainable living involves devolution of decision taking in environmental matters from the traditional policy making bodies to the grassroots. Collective environmental responsibility is the ultimate goal and bedrock of the current "Act to protect the Environment" (Act No. V, 1991). The string of events leading to the turndown of the development plans for a cement plant at Sqaq il-Baghal is a very good case study of how effective environmental education can empower grassroots movements to responsibly decide on their future.
All this implies the development of pro-environmental values ... the development of an environmental ethic that would enable citizens to critically evaluate their beliefs, attitudes and values. An environmental ethic capacitates individuals to prioritise values and use them to determine whether their behaviour and lifestyles are compatible with their principles. Harmony between our beliefs and our actions is an essential feature if our pro-environmental actions are to be credible. This has not always been the case: statements condemning sustainable development as "a dangerous concept to the tourism industry", educational (sic) visits to circuses and entertainment sites that carve out their profits on animal suffering, environmental (sic) campaigns sponsored by companies with tainted environmental records ... are just some of the examples in the endless list of incongruencies.

How can we proceed?
No one, in her/his right sense of mind, would dare say that environmental education is not the most effective way of ensuring environmental protection. However, the problem with environmental education is that it has long-term goals that, although having lasting effects, take a long time to be achieved. This might explain why environmental education does not feature in the priority lists of certain policy makers who seem to be more concerned with short-term goals that serve to pump up their "good deeds portfolios". These last few years witnessed a series of environmental education projects that have been denied implementation:
(a) Concrete suggestions made during the first "National Training Workshop on Environmental Education in Malta" to provide an infrastructure within the formal education sector for environmental education were published in the event's proceedings (IDEA, 1987) ... shelved and forgotten.
(b) A UNESCO funded project run by the Faculty of Education consisting of a teacher's manual with practical suggestions on how to infuse environmental education into the primary school subjects as a cross-curricular theme (University of Malta, 1991) was never disseminated in local schools ... although it was acclaimed in foreign ones.
(c) The national environmental education strategy (NEES) set up to " ... focus its action on the formal and informal sectors of education with the goal of directing educational processes towards the development of a new environmental ethic - education for sustainability." (NEES Action Group, 1995) has, for these last five years, trudged along desperately seeking financial support to achieve its aims.
(d) The decision to set up a centre for the promotion of environmental education and research in the Euro-Med region was announced in the media in June 1999 and to date is still awaiting the green light from the relevant governmental bodies.
Needless to say, besides resulting in a waste of human resources, this shelving of long-term environmental education initiatives is having the adverse effect of rendering Malta's level of environmental responsibility well below the accepted standards. This claim has been verified by the feedback we got from the EU, which highlighted the environment as an area that needs some serious amends.
What is required is a serious unequivocal commitment toward environmental education by the relevant authorities. This commitment would enable the implementation of environmental education programmes aimed at developing an environmental ethic that would render our society more environmentally responsible. This needs to be done urgently, not just to facilitate our accession in the EU, but because our society deserves the best deal when it comes to quality of life and quality of the environment.

References
Act No. V (1991) An Act to protect the environment. In Supplement of the Malta Government Gazette. No.15,399, 26th February, 1991. Department of Information, Malta.
Foundation for International Studies (1991) Final Report of the International Training seminar on the Incorporation of Environmental Education in Primary School Curricula. University of Malta.
IDEA (Institute of Design for Environmental Action) (1987) National Training Workshop on Environmental Education in Malta (April 6-10,1987). Beltissebh, Malta.
NEES Action Group (1995) National Environmental Education Strategy Business Plan. Mimeo
Pace, P. (1996) Environmental education: the way ahead. In Pace, P. (ed.) In Today's Education ... Tomorrow's Environment. Malta.
Pace, P. (1997) Environmental education in Malta: trends and challenges. Environmental Education Research, 3(1), pp. 69-82.
University of Malta (1991) Incorporating Environmental Education into the Primary School Curriculum: A Teacher's Manual. Faculty of Education, University of Malta.