Africa-Press – South-Sudan. No one is born knowing everything. We learn from our guardians, the surrounding community, school, and even the media environment we interact with. All these influence the kind of person that we end up being.
This is what makes environmental education a necessity for us as individuals and as a community. Environmental education, also known as EE, is the process that allows individuals to explore environmental issues, engage in problem-solving, and take action to improve the environment.
As a result, individuals develop a deeper understanding of environmental issues and have the skills to make informed and responsible decisions. A community that has individuals that are environmentally informed ends up with an environment. The history of environmental education differs across the globe.
In the western world, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is credited with insisting that education contain environmental components in the 18th century, while Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-born naturalist, echoed Rousseau’s philosophy as he encouraged students to “study nature and not books.
” These two influential scholars helped lay the foundation for a concrete environmental education program, known as Nature Study, which took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Environmental problems such as the dust bowl have cropped up in the world, and environmental education has started to be taken more seriously by organisations, governments, and schools.
Let’s go back in time
In Africa and other parts of the world, environmental awareness by the community is passed down to the younger generation through fables and role modelling behaviour that protects the environment.
The oldest African communities did not hunt certain animals when they are breeding, nor do they destroy forests irreparably when the soil or land was exhausted from farming.
They gave it a break to rejuvenate and become fertile again. All these attitudes, skills, behaviours, and knowledge about the environment and how to take care of it were passed down through everyday learning and observing.
But in today’s world, a lot of good environmental practices have been forgotten, and the world currently faces new environmental challenges that were not there several centuries ago.
This requires communities, nations, and individuals to first become aware of the kinds of environmental issues that face them and then develop the appropriate skills and attitudes that will enable them to live harmoniously with the environment.
It is said that knowledge inspires change. And that one cannot protect what they are unaware of. It is for this reason that environmental education should be taken seriously in South Sudan, Africa, and the whole world.
Environmental education enables people to realise that nature is us. And that for the environment to keep us alive by giving us food, water, and air, we need to take care of it and reduce overexploitation and pollution.
And there are several ways of carrying out environmental education; with the most common being through schools. This is because these are the future decision-makers and environmentalists of the world.
Furthermore, for our children to live better lives, they would have to develop critical thinking skills and attitudes that enable them to protect, conserve, and sustainably use the environment.
In schools, environmental clubs come in handy as they form a basis for children to be introduced to simple environmental concepts. Tree planting projects, nature walks, and participating in community projects that deal with the environment are some of the ways through which children can participate.
And to harness their creativity, they can be encouraged to re-use and recover common waste materials in their environment into more useful things, thus reducing waste.
For example, planting flowers or herbs in discarded plastic bottles that would have ended up in the waste pits. South Sudan Environmental Advocates (SSEA), in partnership with Clean Sustainable Future, a Sweden-based company, is well versed in carrying out such projects.
Communities are also crucial points for environmental education. Through governmental or non-governmental organisations, seminars and meetings can be held to discuss environmental issues facing the community.
This enables the community to identify what ails their environment, which sometimes differs from village to village, and also allows them to realise why it is important for them to alleviate the problem.
They can then be assisted or given a forum to come up with local solutions that are cheap and yet work. For example, communities can agree that for every tree cut; two shall be planted on its behalf, and they can keep an indigenous tree nursery in a public place for easy access to the seedlings.
Environmental education can also be carried out through the media. In today’s world, it is easy to access radio stations, social media, newspapers, and television channels that all inform us of what is happening in the world.
This media can be used to raise awareness, as well as to teach skills and attitudes about environmental issues in the area. The use of local languages that people understand also helps to demystify environmental issues.
In social media, groups and communities with the same goal can be formed and attract individuals that are interested in making changes for the betterment of the environment.
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